Quick Soft Focus Look For Portraits

I love the look of a soft focus portrait. Here is a quick and easy way you can achieve this style yourself using Photoshop. Before we begin you need to make a duplicate copy of the picture that you want to work with.

Step 1: make a duplicate layer of the image. You can do this by going to the top of you tool bar and clicking on LAYER> DUPLICATE LAYER > then OK

Step 2: you need to make the layer black and white. You can do this by going to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > DESATURATE

Step 3: Change the layer to color by going to your layer pallet/window and use the drop down arrow and change from NORMAL to COLOR

Step 4: Merge the top layer. You can merge the top layer (and still keep the bottom layers) by pressing SHIFT + CTRL + ALT + E at the same time.

Step 5: Outline the mouth, nose and eyes using the lasso tool. While drawing the outlines press shift at the same time so you can make multiple selections. Once you have drawn the outline press SHIFT+CTRL+I to invert the selection **HINT** You also want to make sure that you have the feather selection set to 15 or higher (I like mine set to 30)

Step 6: Blur the selection. Now you want to blur your selection using the Gaussian blur tool by going to FILTER > BLUR > GAUSSIAN BLUR. In the new box set your radius selection to 15.0 pixels or higher. You barely want to be able to make out the facial features.

Step 7: Change Layer to Screen. Now go to the Layer box and change the layer from NORMAL to SCREEN and adjust the Opacity to your liking. AND YOU’RE DONE!

I like to up my saturation after I have done this but the best part minor facial flaws disappear and in turn you don’t have to do as much facial cleaning / cloning to get that perfect skin. After you get used to playing with layers and finding your preferred technique it will only take you a couple minutes to get the perfect effect you want to achieve.

here is your before

and after