Bluring Picture

TR
Posted By
Thomas_Rooney
Aug 2, 2004
Views
264
Replies
4
Status
Closed
Hi Everyone,

I am trying to blur the background of a picture so the person in the picture would appear sharper. I clicked on the blur tool and started to sweep across the picture, but it doesn’t seem to be getting blurry. Is this the correct way to do it? What am I doing wrong? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Tom
Related Tags
picture

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

MM
Mac_McDougald
Aug 2, 2004
While blur tool will work, difficult to control, better to:

Select the section you want blurred first, then use one of the blur filters.

Or select what you want to stay sharp, then select inverse, and apply blur filters.

Mac
SB
Stu_Bloom
Aug 2, 2004
If the blur tool isn’t working, the most likely reason is that you have an adjustment layer active. You need a content layer active for it to have any effect.

I find the blur tool useful for minor touchup of small areas, like in areas of faces where there is no wanted detail. I get a lot of really bad images of people that I have to apply really aggressive sharpening and contrast boosting to in order to make them minimally presentable. Those techniques cause the cheeks, foreheads, etc. to get all blotchy (and since these are obituary pictures those areas are often blotchy to begin with!), and the blur tool is just the ticket for quickly fixing the problem.

But for larger areas, as Mac said, the blur filters are the tool of choice. The Gaussian blur is the most generally useful. The smart blur is incredibly just that, smart, when you want to leave sharp edges alone but blur the fine-grained detail.
PC
Pat_Coggin
Aug 2, 2004
Thomas, make sure the layer you want to work on is selected. Also, make sure your opacity on that layer is not set too low …
TR
Thomas_Rooney
Aug 3, 2004
Thank you for your suggestions. I can’t wait to give them a shot.

Must-have mockup pack for every graphic designer 🔥🔥🔥

Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

Related Discussion Topics

Nice and short text about related topics in discussion sections