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Dreamy Effect

by Belz on Nov.15, 2008, under Basics

Have you ever wondered why some photos look dreamy, like the flower photo above? It looks like it came straight from a scene in a fairy tale movie—softly lit, perceptive, fluid, vivid, and it touches something inside of you. You stare at the hints of light that gently touch elements on the photograph; you’re trying to convince yourself it’s a dream. But really, it’s not.

It’s just plain old Photoshop.

This is the original image taken from seafoodmwg-

1. Let get started! First open up your image in Photoshop. This effect works best with bright colours so if you have to, adjust your colours so that it is bright, but not too bright.

2. Then duplicate the image by pressing CTRL + J or go to Layer, then press Duplicate Layer and after you press that a menu will pop-up just press ok.

3. Make sure that the duplicated image is selected, then go on to Filter, then Blur and then click on Gaussian Blur.

4. On the Gaussian Blur dialog box, indicate the radius of the blur you wish to apply on your photo. The ideal scale value is when your photo is blurred enough to hide the details, but you should still be able to recognize the image behind it. Start with 5.0 and adjust from there. In the flower photo, I selected a value of 5.0 pixels.

5. With the duplicated image layer selected in the Layers palette, select the blending mode called Multiply. In this step, watch as the photo instantly turn into something new!

6. Finished-

Download the PSD file here