Incidentally good result

[PatrickB]

This is a picture of my gf and her friend. It was shot during a warm-up session and of pretty low quality and poor lighting, yet they loved the shot and wanted this picture. After a few enhancement and improvements I ran across my usual "super-secret-mystery-skin-smoothing"-technique (blur) and achieved this glowing effect.

[Cassidy]

too hard on yourself Patrick, repeat out aloud "I am not an animal", despite depictions otherwise

[PatrickB]

Why the heck do I have that feeling this elephant thread will accompany me all of my rp-life?

[Cassidy]

no it wont, smileys only from me, totally selfish just looking for acknowledgement, call it my ego or whatever, lol

[Cassidy]

btw, absolutely gorgeous elephant eyes

[Jeronimas]

Originally Posted by PatrickB

This is a picture of my gf and her friend. It was shot during a warm-up session and of pretty low quality and poor lighting, yet they loved the shot and wanted this picture. After a few enhancement and improvements I ran across my usual "super-secret-mystery-skin-smoothing"-technique (blur) and achieved this glowing effect.

"super-secret-mystery-skin-smoothing" lol ), I think pro's use this technique as well, just they have different name for it, as you said, super secret

[Kraellin]

ok, skipping the elephant trend here, i like it. very nicely done. i really dont understand this aversion to blur by some. the results are all that matter. how you got there is moot, except as a lesson on how to get there again. i think it's a delightful picture. very nicely done!

now, the picture does have a sort of hindu statue look to it with all those arms flailing about, and i do believe the hindus have a sort of mystical regard for the elephant...

craig

[studioj]

Ok Patrick, I have been trying with all my blurs, and non works like yours.

How did you do it?

[PatrickB]

It's under Filter/Blur/Genius Blur

Seriosly,

I use this mainly for fashion and beauty. It had always annoyed me that skin had such a few variations in luminosity on many pictures. So to enhance skin I often used a blurred layer which I set to overlay. (Basically the overlay-layer is a skin-flattening layer with a median blur or something which is a common thing to smooth skin) The result is it enhances lights and shadows, yes, but not very smoothly.

So my technique for this is to apply a very heavy blur, say 20-40 pixels, depending on the image quality and size. With a little adjustment of brightness and contrast you can achieve awesome gradients and a wide range of skin tones throughout the picture.

Well I applied that to the picture and this is what I got before I could apply any masks. Of course I usually set the opacity on the overlay-layer a lot lower, but for this picture it works out just fine, doesn't it? The halo-effect is a result of the light skin and the dark background.

Attached an example of how it looks like if applied to skin only and with the right opacity.

[studioj]

Thanks a lot, it's really a great simple technique

Genius blur