In this short video, Colin Smith at PhotoCAFE comes through once again with an easy way to improve the look of your photographs using gaussian blur in Photoshop. The tip itself is worthwhile, but his "bonus" tip is the key to making it really work.
There are countless ways to process photos in Adobe Photoshop, but, of course, there are only so many hours in a day. So we're always trying to find new, quick ways to process our images and improve the final product.
While I tend to add a bit of sharpening to most of my images, I'm looking forward to trying out Smith's technique, softening the image just a bit to add a nice level of contrast. His tip takes about a minute to watch and even less time to execute. The best part is that it's easily made even faster by recording the steps into an action.
For those who haven't created their own actions in Photoshop, simply click the Actions tab, click "Create New Action," name it, click record, go through the steps laid out by Smith, click Stop, and, boom: the next time you want to soften your image, it's a one-click process. If you have any difficulty, check out this easy Fstoppers tutorial by Robert K. Baggs for creating your own actions.
Yuck, I've never been a fan on these detail destroying techniques. This looks more like a niche filter to apply. Some will like it and others won't.
That's fair. But a niche filter does not make it a useless filter. This is a quick and easy way to make this style photograph look better. Can you honestly look at the before and after photos in the video and argue that the before images look better?
Honestly, I don't like the look of the after image. However like you said that does not mean I have any issue with someone else falling in love with the look and using it.
THIS looks so bad! way do you guys do a post on it?? :S
Like anything else, it depends on your intentions. The lead image, for example, is a strong model portrait for corporate or magazine use. It’s probably not what you want in your wedding album.
Sooooooo want to poke my own eyes out after watching that. :-(
Hey, Colin -- i liked it! Another tool in the box and a look that will work well in the music biz here (Nashville). I will make an action and call it -- Colin's Look?
Don't stop! Fast changes like this are what I want!
For land scape, yes, but for portrait...looks more and more like horrible portrait-pro plug in...
my eyes are bleeding...
Nice, thank you for sharing.
Nice, thank you for sharing.