Soft Focus Effect in Photoshop Elements

The Soft Focus Effect is great to get some unimportant details on a photo into the background

With Photoshop Elements you can easily pretend a Soft Focus Effect. You just keep the object of your choice sharp in the foreground and blur the background. This way you put attention on your photo object. Here is a fast and easy way to do so with Photoshop Elements. The Soft Focus Effect is easy to make and a great way to make your photo look special. Professional Photographers often use the Soft Focus Effect already when they take the picture. They simply keep the lens open, then the focus lies on the object to photograph and not the background.

The Soft Focus Effect

It might be also a nice idea to play a little around with the Soft Focus Effect – you could for example keep one or two elements in the background and one in the foreground sharp while the rest of the picture is blurred.With the help of the Soft Focus Effect you decide where the attention of the viewer of your picture goes to.

Do you like the tutorials? You can find many more videos here on our blog. Check out the video tutorials for Photoshop Elements 9.

Here is an example of a picture using the Soft Focus Effect

Soft Focus Effect – written Tutorial

Please note: this tutorial is just a help when you are familiar with Photoshop or if you have watched the video.

1. Open a picture and choose the Selection Brush Tool from the left side. Select the object you want to turn into the focus.

2. Click select –> inverse to select the area around the subject.

3. The area around the cat is now blurry and the cat is in the center – this is the Soft Focus Effect!