Create Dreamy, Soft Portraits Using Gaussian Blur and Blending Modes

This video is a short but very effective instructional for creating a soft glow effect using Photoshop and it should work in any recent version of Photoshop.

The technique can be exploited using actions to make it even swifter, but you would need to allow for the ability to key in different blur amounts in any action you record.

Further Information

For a more advanced technique which produces a romantic soft glow with a rose tint see my previous video. It’s a lot longer but contains some very useful Photoshop tips.

Download the image used from Fotolia. Or use the technique on one of your own portraits. The image used in this video has some unwanted gradient banding and applying the blur in 16 bit mode helps to reduce this somewhat.