Does anyone know of a technique with Photoshop 5.0 that will create the effect of using a soft focus lens or filter on the camera. The usual filters (blur, noise, etc.) don't seem to duplicate the soft light scattering effect that the camera lens or filter achieves.

-- Dennis Pereira (dpereira@ultranet.com), January 14, 2000

Answers

In the window menu select "show actions". On the actions pallet click the rightward facing arrow and scroll down to either "load actions" or "replace actions". Photoshop comes with some pretty good actions. They are in the photoshop directory, the path is: Photoshop 5.0, goodies, actions. There is an action set named image effects and it has an action called soft edge glow. I did not check it out. Good luck!

-- Don (deldon@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000.

You can try one other way. Duplicate the layer apply gausian blur to your liking. scale the image slightly larger than the unblurred background. Then set the opacity for that layer at between 25% 30 percent. You will have the sharp image backgound surrounded by a glow which is proportional to opacity and scale you set for the out of focus layer.

-- jonathan ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), January 14, 2000.