HOLLYWOOD GLOW - Using the 'Overlay' Blend Mode to make a soft focus portrait.
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All images © by Jon Davison 2007.

Here is an interesting way of giving a soft 'Hollywood' glow to your portaits. We will use a Blend Mode (Overlay) over
an original image to soften the image. 1: Original as shot. 2: Overlay Blend mode in normal colour.

Click for a larger example.

THE METHOD

1. Open the image 'lilly_raw.jpg' in Photoshop. Click 'F' to give yourself a grey background, and only keep your Layers Palette on screen. Close all other windows. If you wish you can have 'History' up in the Palette Well.

2. Make a duplicate layer by pressing 'Co-J', then desaturate this layer by 'Co-Shift-U'. You should have 2 layers now (see below)
one colour and one mono? We now need to blur this mono layer and add a Blend Mode to it.



3. Go 'Filters-Blur-Gaussian Blur' by about 9-10 pixels



4. Next we need to add a sepia tint to the new blurred layer. Go 'Image-Adjustments-Colour Balance' +19 Red and -48 Yellow.

5. The point of this exercise is to 'blend' this blurred sepia layer with the original colour one beneath it. So in your layer palette, on the drop down arrow where it says 'Normal', click this and choose 'Overlay'. This has now blended the soft blurred layer with the colour one to give a subtle softness to it.


Note how the face has got softer but the hair is more dense. We can use the 'Erase Tool (V)' here to rub out some of this
density to reveal the hair in the layer beneath.

Before and after this treatment. Your image should look like the one on the right. You can see this by turning the layer visibility
off (the eye to the left of the icon in the layer palette) We will now make a layer of the girls eyes and
clean this layer up. Notice how the blend mode has softened the face.

6. Select the eyes with your Lasso Tool like so. Then 'Co-J' to make a layer of this selection. Don't worry if you cannot see a difference, you won't. Until that is, you use 'Image-Adjustments-Curves'. What we are doing here is lightening the eyes.
Once you have lightened them to roughlyy this degree (it does not matter if you go over the top here, as you can always
adjust the opacity later. In fact it is better if you do this).

7. Now use your 'Eraser Tool (V)' to rub out everything BUT the eyes.

Notice now how the eyes have been cleaned up. You adjust the
'Opacity' in the Layers Palette to get the right degree of white in the eyes.

You can do the same process a number of times if you wish, to get the right
degree of softening. With Curves or Levels you can lighten the image up even
further. Alternatively you can gently desaturate the image to minimize the
orange tint.

3: Overlay Blend mode in blue. 4: Overlay Blend more in mono with added contrast in the hair.