Saturday Special – 5/9 Selective Blurring

Hello everyone!  Jeni here with your Saturday Special challenge for the day so let’s get to it!

For today’s challenge we’re going to add some blur to our photos.  I know, sounds weird but stick with me and you’ll see why.     Have you ever had a picture with a distracting background?  I have this picture of my daughter and I love how it captures her smile and the size of it is perfect, but that wrapped gift and Target bag in the background are really distracting.  I could crop them out but that would make my picture the wrong size for what I want to do.  The solution?  Blur out the distracting elements. 

(NOTE:  This tut was created in PSCS3 but will work in PSE.  You can probably adapt it to most other programs as well.)

First, using your rectangular marquee tool select the portion of your photo that you would like blurred.  Make sure that you zoom way in so that you can get right up to the edge of your photo.  You don’t want any extra spots where the background shows through in the selection – this is important because we are going to be saving this selection for future use.  Before we get to that let’s make a copy of that portion of our photo.  Hit Ctrl+J and another layer should show up in your palette. Next make sure you’ve still got those marching ants marching around your to be blurred piece (if they aren’t Ctrl+click on the thumbnail of that piece of your photo in your layers palette) and then go to Select>Save Selection.  In the new window that pops up choose a name for your selection and hit o.k.  Hit Ctrl+D (or Select>Deselect) to get rid of your marching ants now.

Next we’re going to blur that little piece.  Highlight that layer in your layers palette and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur.  Enter the amount of blur that you like (mine was 30) and hit OK.

Now if you zoom in you’ll see that the edges of that little piece have been really blurred and are hanging over the edge of your original photo.  This is where that saved selection comes in!  Highlight that little piece in your layers palette and go to Select>Load Selection.  In the channel area hit the drop down menu button and choose the selection that you saved previously.  Here is the important part – tic the little box below it that says Invert.  (NOTE:  If you do not have this little invert box you can load the selection and then with those marching ants going click on Select>Inverse.  You’ll get the same results – it’s just a few more keystrokes.)
Now that we have loaded our selection and inverted it hit the DELETE button.  The blurry edges are gone and my distractions are all blurred out!

That’s pretty much it!  I added a ribbon to cover up the blurred edge connecting to my photo. I chose to put my title on the blurred background but it would also be great as a little journaling spot.  The possibilities are endless!  Here’s my finished page. 

Here are some more great examples from the SM Creative Team:

By alamama using WMsquared’s {Shabby Chic}

By kimbytx using Jennifer Barrette and Juno Designs {Extraordinary} and Sya’s Blueprints {Long N Skinny}

Now for the rules!  You have until May 31 to complete this challenge.  You must scrap your own page and post it in the Saturday Special Gallery here. Then link your page to this thread in the forum. Your page must be unique to this challenge – no double dipping!  : )  You’ll receive one point for your completed page, and you can earn an extra point by using a newly released design from the shop but you MUST mention this with your post in the forum.  You don’t have to use ScrapMatters products, but of course we love it if you do!  I can’t wait to see all your blurry pictures – LOL!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at 9:02 am and is filed under ScrapMatters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.