Improving Your Images Step 5: Making the Image "pop"!

After 5 weeks of going through steps to clean up an image, we are now ready to get creative. There are many ways to enhance an image depending on your artistic intent. I will go through a quick method I first learned a few years ago.

1. Right click on the background image and make a duplicate.
2. Make sure the background copy is selected, then go to "filter" and find the "blur" option and finally the "gaussian blur".
3. Once selected, a dialogue box will appear, choose a setting (I went with 20 but experiment to see what works best for you). The image is now blurred.
4. Now select the blend mode and scroll down to "soft light".
5. To adjust the blending of these two images (background and the gaussian blurred copy) adjust the opacity until you are happy with the result.
That is it!

 In the next blog we will add a subtle vignette to draw the viewer's attention inward.
 

have fun! ☺

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