Photoshop - How to add a dreamy effect to your pictures
This is a quick how-to, written to show you how to add a dreamy effect to your pictures, using Photoshop.
Years ago, I read about these couple of steps online somewhere. They taught me how to create a dreamy effect on my pictures. To this day, I still use this effect from time to time, to add a little finishing touch to my pictures.
The example
First off, I'll show you a little example of what I'm talking about. This was a picture that needed some spicing up, so I added the dreamy effect.
You'll see some blurring going on and there's also a bit of extra contrast here.
How to create this effect
Let's talk about how you can create this effect yourself! Now I like to use it combined with some sharpening, but it will take away some of the dreamy effect. Just play around with this yourself to see what you prefer.
- Open up your picture in Photoshop and edit it like you normally do. (Optionally: Leave the sharpening for later.)
- Now you'll need your end product on one, duplicate layer. For this, you'll want your other layers merged, so if you're using seperate layers, you might want to save a copy of your file for safe keeping.
- Merge your existing layers into one by using ctrl + shift + e.
- Duplicate your layer by using ctrl + j.
- Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
- You'll want your top layer very blurry, like a radius of 40 pixels or so.
- Once you've blurred your top layer, go to the Layers section and tone down the Opacity to 25% or so. This should already give a soft and dreamy feel to your image.
- Next, we'll pick a blending option. You can play around with them a bit, but most of the time, Overlay will give a nice and dreamy feel, as well as bring out some extra contrast.
- Depending on how dreamy you want, you can play with this layer's Opacity a bit more. Just keep in mind that the higher the opacity is, the less detailed your image will be.
- Optionally: Once you're satisfied, merge the two layers (ctrl + e) and sharpen your image like you usually do (I like to use Unsharp Mask for this).
Done!
You can use the effect on any picture, but I feel it's most effective on landscape pictures.
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Nice view. All your pictures are great. 😍 What camera do you use?
Aww thank you very much! I used to shoot a lot with my Canon PowerShot SX200 IS, which gave great pictures. Now I use a Canon EOS500 with an all-round Sigma lens :-)
Thanks for the information. :) Now that I joined Steemit I think need to buy a camera for higher quality pics.
No problem! It depends on what you want to focus on here. Photography is a big hobby of mine, so I have quite an expensive camera. For my regular blog posts, however, I usually use my phone pictures. It doesn't have great quality, but it's way easier to carry around with me and gets the point of my writing across aswell :-)
I like taking pictures but I wasn't thinking about taking it to the next level till Steamit. Of course, phones camera is easier to use. :)
I will have to try this.
Edit: I bookmarked this.
i like the way you explain how to add blurryness to photos, it certainly make it looks much more appealing but I don't have photoshop and I only use my iPhone 6s+ to take photos. I do have a Canon EOS camera but find all the transferring very troublesome so just use my phone for now. I use Photofix App to do my editing and I really like it. Thank you for sharing your tips, I love all how to posts.
Thank you very much :-)
I understand what you mean by it being troublesome! Actually, I keep on having to find the EOS tool to download again after a fresh install, but the tool itself is really handy to get things done quickly. It's the editing after that I keep putting off ;-)
My phone isn't the greatest for taking pictures. It works fine for my regular blog posts, but if I want to make good pictures, I always go back to my Canon cameras. I never really tried an editing app on the phone. It's never felt very appealing to me, because I find working on the phone quite annoying to be honest! It's not the best phone out there...
nice
Thanks, please tell me what you liked about my post?
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