Many photos can be enhanced by adding a soft focus ‘look’.  This technique works particularly well on photos of the elderly, or any photo where the skin looks splotchy or uneven.  Sometimes you may just want to add a ‘dreamy’ quality to the photo.

What you’ll need:

• Adobe Elements 2.0 or Photoshop 7.0 or higher

• Photograph in digital format

You’ll learn how to:

• Use Layer Opacity

• Use the Gaussian Blur Filter

Open Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Open your Photo.

Choose File > Open and browse your system for photo.

Click photo of choice and then choose Open.

We are going to use layers to add the soft focus.

Choose Layer>Duplicate Layer.

Click on the bottom (background) layer in the Layers Palette to make it active, as shown at the right.

Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Try a Radius of about 25 pixels.  The higher this number, the ‘softer’ you effect will be.

Click OK.

NOTE: You will not see a change in your image because the blurred layer is hidden by the top layer.

Adjust the layer OPACITY in the Layers Palette of the top layer until the softness of your photo looks just right. 

I used 59% here.  The lower the opacity, the softer you photo will appear.

Be sure to save your photo with a new name so you can always go back to the original.  If you save the file as a PSD (with layers) then you can always go back and adjust the ‘softness’.