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Fast and great photo retouch!
By Ps graphiX | august 21, 2007
Today I’m going to teach you how to create two great effects for photo retouch. The first can actually be used on almost every photos and maybe other graphics to. The second is best suited for portraits or other pictures where there is an object that’s in focus so… Let’s start!
First you need to find a stock image, or a picture of your own that you want to apply these techniques on. I found this nice picture that you can see below. If you want to use it, here’s a link for you 
Ok, this is easy:
Firs, Ctrl+J (duplicates the layer).
Then, Filter>Blur>Gaussian blur. The amount of blur really depends on the size of the picture. I re-sized mine for this tutorial (557*408) and then it suits me best with a 5,5px radius on the blur.
Set the layer to Overlay, and you already have a cool picture, but I’ll lower the opacity to about 80%. This is actually depending on what effect you want. Now I have this:
Now it’s more colorful, dynamic and I personally like it much better although it would be better if you make it a bit darker. And you… have just learned a new technique (maybe)! And now we are heading over to the next technique: Blur the background!
First, we need a selection of our background. And we are going to do it with the pen tool (ofcourse you can do it your way, but I’ll shoe you my way).
Chose the pen tool (P) and use this option:
And now we are going to draw around the background. I won’t teach you how to use the pen tool, but there are many tutorials out there if you don’t know how.
Here is my “drawing” (click to enlarge):
Now (after you have closed your “drawing”) you must right click in your drawing and select “Make selection”. I chose a feather of 5px and clicked OK.
Now you are going to blur again. But remember to do it on the background layer and still have the selection. Blur until you have what you want and click ok (i chose 3px). And now you’re finished! Although i would like to make it darker (you might like so to. So I merged the layers and went to Image>Adjustment>Brightness/Contrast and selected -75 in brightness.
This is our (or mine if you really want) final outcome (click to enlarge):
And here’s the one we started with again:
Of course you can continue editing, or you can just LEAVE A COMMENT PLEASE 
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Topics: Photoshop Tutorials | 25 Comments »