Feature: Making Portraits Pop with Blur

I love that magic moment in the movies when the hero emerges from the mist to save the day. One moment, all you see is fog. Then, a second later, the hero emerges triumphantly to set things right, often in very nick of time, and the movie ends happily. Maybe that's why I like to design portraits with blurry backgrounds; it's like capturing a slice of Hollywood in my photographs.

This week, let's see how to take a fairly ordinary picture--perhaps one of your holiday shots--and jazz it up with some dramatic background blur. We'll blur the background but leave the subject intact. Your subject will pop out of the mist, adding an extra dimension to your picture.

Laying Down Layers

Start by opening a portrait in your favorite image editor. I'll use a picture of my wife, in which I captured her staring dreamily out of a train window. The picture is not very good, especially since the background is quite cluttered.

Our first task is to duplicate the picture in a new layer. If you're using Jasc Paint Shop Pro, choose Layers, Duplicate from the menu. Nothing appears to have changed, but you really have two identical copies of the photo stacked. Anything we do to the picture now will affect the top layer only, leaving the bottom image intact. We'll take advantage of that next when we add the blur.

Blurring the Picture

Now it's time to blur the picture. We won't differentiate between the subject and the background; we'll blur everything at once. In Paint Shop Pro, choose Adjust, Blur, Gaussian Blur. In the Gaussian Blur dialog box, set the Radius to 15 and click OK.

Here's how this setting works: The greater the radius, the blurrier the image will become. The exact value to use is a matter of personal taste. A radius of 15 will render most backgrounds totally abstract; in the image I'm using, that's the effect I want. If you would rather have less pronounced blur so that you can identify the background, set the radius to a lower value, like 8.

Expose the Subject

Now it's time to reveal the subject of our photos. Click the Eraser Tool, which resides in the seventh cubby from the bottom of the toolbar on the left side of the screen. With the Eraser selected, set the Opacity to about 20 or 30 percent. You can find the Opacity in the Tool Options palette at the top of the screen; if the palette is turned off, toggle it on by choosing View, Palettes, Tool Options. By keeping the opacity low, we can avoid getting a dramatic border between the sharp and blurry parts of the picture. While you're up in the Tool Options palette, set the Size of the eraser to about 50.

Now it's time to erase. Click and drag inside the subject's face, and then move around, revealing sharpness wherever you think it's appropriate. The more times you run the eraser over a given area, the more of the blurry layer you'll erase--so you can control the transition from sharp to blurry everywhere in the frame. To exact finer control over the edges of the subject--like in her hair--you can reduce the radius of the eraser.

I cropped the final version of my photo to focus attention on the subject.