Soft focus effects are popular in portrait photography but they can also work well in landscapes and other kinds of imagery where you want to create a romantic, ethereal look.
There are many different ways of creating a soft focus look. In a regular image editor like Photoshop or Affinity Photo, you can combine a blurred image layer with the original using blend modes and layer opacity, for example, but if you’re using all-in-one editing/effects programs like Luminar, ON1 Photo RAW or Alien Skin Exposure, you’ll find soft focus tools built in.
Alternatively, you can use a plug-in suite like the Google Nik Collection, which has a multitude of ways of adding a soft focus or glow effect to your pictures.
You normally associate soft focus effects with portraits, but they can work on all kinds of images, adding a romantic, dreamy feel to an everyday scene. Landscapes, for example, are often given a dramatic, brooding look when sometimes the emotion … Continue reading Try this soft focus effect on landscapes
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It’s all very well giving advice about how to achieve certain effects using this software or that software, but it always strikes me that no-one ever talks about WHY you should use a particular effect with a particular subject. Books … Continue reading Budapest parliament
The Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow effect would normally be used on portraits, but I think it works rather well on other subjects too. It adds an ethereal glow to everyday subjects, gives colours a pure, rich depth and lets … Continue reading Give your landscapes a mystic glow with the Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow effect
