Technique to Soften Images

[Joe M]

Photoshop User TV (http://www.photoshopusertv.com/)had a great technique for softening images this week (April 14th show). It's meant to be used for portraits but I've used it on several different kinds of images and it works great. It gives a softening effect while still leaving detail.

The tutorial is for CS3. I don't know of a way to do it in PSE but someone else may know a work around.

Basically it's similar to using the High Pass filter for sharpening with a small change.

On a duplicate layer apply the High Pass Filter.

Change blending mode to Soft Light.

Go to Image>Adjustments>Invert and invert the layer. Adjust the opacity of the layer to your preference.

[Diana]

Hi Joe,

Here is a wonderful PSE action that I use:

http://scrapbookbytes.com/store/digital-scrapbooking-supplies/windgefluester/PS&PSE-action-soft_colors.html

There is also one to give a cartoon effect to a photo:

http://scrapbookbytes.com/store/search.php?mode=search&page=1

Diana

[Michel B]

This works in Elements as well. As a matter of fact, this is exactly how a gaussian blur works, based on radius.
One advantage I see to use softlight highpass layers is that you can easily control sharpening and blurring on two distinct layers without masks, which is handy in Elements.
You can set different radiuses for each layer, change opacity at will
You can mask simply by painting with 50% grey on each mask, paint grey on the sharpening layer for the parts to blur, and vice versa. You paint grey on both to have neither sharpening nor blurring. It is easy to create a progressive blur to simulate depth of field.

[Joe M]

Thank you Diana I will try the softening action.

Thanks Michel. I knew someone would know how to do this in PSE.

I wouldn't normally post a technique that was so simple. But when I saw the results, and how easy it was to manipulate, I thought this was great.

[lexcell]

Joe,
That really is a very cool technique...a modification of one I have been using already. Thanks for sharing!

[shrinkie1964]

i have very quickly been getting really good results with Kelby's Three Step Portrait technique as described in his newest book. Indeed, after some ambivalence about the book it is the one thing I learned that really made me glad to part with the thirty bucks. Here is one example of mine I just shared yesterday:
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36694

Les

[TonyW]

Photoshop User TV (http://www.photoshopusertv.com/)had a great technique for softening images this week (April 14th show). It's meant to be used for portraits but I've used it on several different kinds of images and it works great. It gives a softening effect while still leaving detail.

The tutorial is for CS3. I don't know of a way to do it in PSE but someone else may know a work around.

Basically it's similar to using the High Pass filter for sharpening with a small change.

On a duplicate layer apply the High Pass Filter.

Change blending mode to Soft Light.

Go to Image>Adjustments>Invert and invert the layer. Adjust the opacity of the layer to your preference.

Joe: There's one step missing in this. After the Invert, Matt used Blend If which has the effect of softening the skin but leaving the eyes etc sharp. It's a very powerful feature of Photoshop that lets you control the range of tones and colors that the layer blend mode is applied to. That doesn't have an equivalent in Elements and about the only way I think you would have to do it would be to selectively mask the areas you wanted to keep sharp which involves a bit more work. I've never tried to see if an action in Photoshop using Blend If works in Elements although as it tends to be image specific I'm not sure that would help - but I'll have to experiment.

Tony

[Joe M]

I'm glad you liked it Laurie.

Thanks Tony, I love Blend-If and found it to be very useful in different situations. Matt explained it much better than I could in the video.

Blend-If is great for replacing a sky, knocking out an object from the background, all kinds of stuff. But it can be complicated and takes some practice.

Personally on this effect I don't think it's needed. For example, I would much rather simply mask out the eyes, mouth, and hair. I found that Blend-If can impact too much of the photo. On other photos, say a landscape, where you may want the foreground to be sharper and background to be soft. I found it's much better to use a large soft brush with a lowered opacity, or even a gradient on the mask.

Blend-If certainly has it's uses, and I use it all the time. But sometimes a brush and layer mask does much better.

[Michel B]

Joe: There's one step missing in this. After the Invert, Matt used Blend If which has the effect of softening the skin but leaving the eyes etc sharp. It's a very powerful feature of Photoshop that lets you control the range of tones and colors that the layer blend mode is applied to. That doesn't have an equivalent in Elements and about the only way I think you would have to do it would be to selectively mask the areas you wanted to keep sharp which involves a bit more work. I've never tried to see if an action in Photoshop using Blend If works in Elements although as it tends to be image specific I'm not sure that would help - but I'll have to experiment.

Tony

Please let us know the results of your experiments. What I know is that if you drag an adjustment layer with a blend if condition from CS to Elements, the condition is still working ok.

[TonyW]

Michel: Elements does indeed recognize Blend If in an action - I just made one using that smoothing method with the smoothing just being applied to the midtones and highlights and it works fine in Elements. You can have the High Pass filter open up so you can adjust it but of course if you try and have the Blend If open all you get is the Elements Layer Style dialogue box which doesn't have the Blend If option as it does in Photoshop. But it works and you can get some control of the effect by changing the layer opacity.

Tony

[Michel B]

Thanks Tony,
I suspected it would work since it has been used by Richard Lynch in his free channels tools.