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Written by Steve Patterson. Soft glow effects are a great way to enhance your photos, especially
portrait shots, and creating them in Photoshop is easy. Yet the steps you take to create them can
mean the difference between a static result (meaning one that can't easily be changed or edited later)
and one that's much more flexible, where you can experiment and fine-tune the effect until you get it
looking just right.
Both ways of creating the soft glow effect can be completed very quickly, but which one you choose
will depend a lot on your current skill level and how comfortable you are with Photoshop's more
advanced features (like Smart Objects and Smart Filters). In this tutorial and the next, I'll show you
both ways of doing things, beginning here with the static version that's best for beginners. In the next
tutorial, we'll learn how to create the exact same effect but with much more control over the final
result.
Even if you're new to Photoshop, I encourage you to try out both ways of adding a soft glow to your
images to get a feel for how powerful and flexible Photoshop can be once you go just a little bit
beyond the basics. As always, I'll cover everything step-by-step so no matter what your skill level, you
can easily follow along.
If you want to jump straight into the more advanced version, check out the next tutorial in this series,
Editable Soft Glow With Smart Filters In Photoshop. Otherwise, let's begin with the basics!
Here's the photo I'll be using (woman in field portrait photo from Shutterstock):
Download our tutorials as printable PDFs! Learning Photoshop has never been easier!
With my image newly opened in Photoshop, if we look in my Layers panel, we see the photo sitting on
the Background layer, currently the only layer in my document:
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easiest way to do that is to click on the Background layer and drag it down onto the New Layer icon
at the bottom of the Layers panel (it's the second icon from the right):
The "Background copy" layer appears above the original Background layer.
It's always a good idea to rename layers in your Layers panel so you have a better sense of what's on
each layer and what it's being used for. Let's give the "Background copy" layer a more descriptive
name. To rename a layer, simply double-click directly on its name in the Layers panel. This will
highlight the current name:
To create the actual soft glow effect, we'll first apply some blurring to the "Soft Glow" layer. Then we'll
change the way the blurred layer mixes with the original image below it by changing its blend mode.
To blur the layer, we'll use Photoshop's Gaussian Blur filter. Go up to the Filter menu in the Menu Bar
along the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur:
We don't want to blur the image so much that our subject becomes unrecognizable. We're just trying
to soften things up a bit, so lower radius values tend to work best. Keep in mind, though, that the blur
amount that works best for your specific image may be different from mine and will depend a lot on its
size, with larger photos needing more blurring than smaller ones. Generally, for a subtle glow effect, a
radius value of somewhere around 10 pixels should work well:
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softer than it did before, we can still make out plenty of detail. We'll see even more detail once we
change the layer's blend mode in the next step:
Now that we've blurred the "Soft Glow" layer, let's change the way it interacts with the original image
on the Background layer below it. We do that by changing its blend mode. You'll find the Blend Mode
option in the upper left of the Layers panel. By default, it's set to Normal. Click on the word "Normal" to
bring up a menu of other blend modes and choose Soft Light from the list:
To fine-tune the effect, simply lower the layer's opacity. You'll find the Opacity option in the upper
right of the Layers panel, directly across from the Blend Mode option. The default opacity value is
100%. The more you lower it, the more the original photo below the "Soft Glow" layer will show
through. In other words, we’ll see more of the original image and less of the blurred image.
To change the opacity value, click on the small arrow to the right of the current value, then drag the
slider. I'll lower mine to around 75%, but again, you'll want to keep an eye on your image as you drag
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But, now that I'm done, well, what if I don't really like the result? I went with a subtle glow, but what if a
stronger, more "dreamy" glow would have worked better? How can I go back and change it? I mean, I
can easily change the blend mode from Soft Light to Overlay (and vice versa), and I can try changing
the layer's Opacity value, but that's not really what I want to do. I want to go back and adjust the
amount of blurring I applied with the Gaussian Blur filter way back in Step 3. How do I do that?
The short answer is, I can't, and that's where the problem with this way of creating the soft glow effect
comes in. As soon as we clicked OK to close out of the Gaussian Blur filter, we committed the blur
effect to the layer. In other words, we made a permanent change, or at least, one that can't easily be
undone. A better way to work would be to keep the entire effect, including the Gaussian Blur filter, fully
editable from start to finish. That way, even after the effect is completed, we could still go back and try
different blur amounts to make sure we're getting the best result possible.
In the next tutorial, we'll learn how to create this exact same soft glow effect while keeping every step
completely editable. So if you're ready to take your Photoshop skills to the next level, head on over to
the Editable Soft Glow With Smart Filters tutorial. See you there!
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