Postprocessing - softfocus black & white

The postprocessing effect below was done with Adobe Photoshop 7.0. Black & white softfocus A nice effect is to make a gradually increasing soft-focus effect. This is the original image.     After opening the image in Photoshop, duplicate the one and only Background layer. On this new layer, apply a Gaussian blur filter (Filter | Blur | Gaussian Blur). For a 8 megapixel photo with a resolution of 3456x2304, somewhere about 25 pixels of blur is ok. Modify the amount of blur according to your photo's resolution. Then, reduce the opacity of the new blurred layer to around 20-40%. The amount is dependent on how much soft focus you want.     The resulting image should look something like this.     Next, to make a black & white version, select Layer | Merge Down to merge the blurred layer with the original one. Then select Image | Adjustments | Desaturate to remove all color. You may want to continue and modify a bit of contrast & brightness to increase the vibrance of the photograph.     Return to list of effects.

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