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Photoshop Blur Gallery and Selections

Photoshop Blur Gallery and SelectionsWhile recently writing an upcoming post for Fotolia about the Photoshop Blur Gallery and Iris Blur I made a selection and found the difference between selection, non selection and Smart Objects is quite significant, so here’s my take at an explanation;

In this post I’ve exaggerated all the effects to make them clearer. The image used here is ‘Coffee’ File: #61579135 | Author: magdal3na at Fotolia

Selected Blur

If you’re familiar with Photoshop it will be of no surprise that if you have a selection active on a layer, and you run a Blur Gallery filter, the blur will only effect the area selected, but what if the pin is outside the selection?

photoshop_blur_selection_01

As you can see here, the blur works as it would if the selection wasn’t present, but only effects the area selected. No real surprise.

Selection Bleed

The blur here only takes the area in the selection into account, meaning that the area outside the selection has no effect on the blur. There may be times when this is not desirable and for this there’s Selection Bleed, found at the top left corner.

photoshop_blur_selection_02

By default this is set to 0%, increasing this draws more of the tones from outside the selection into the selected area and thus the blur;

photoshop_blur_selection_03

Here’s the same effect, but simplified;

photoshop_blur_selection_04

The Blur Gallery and Smart Objects

When it comes to the Blur Gallery and selections, Smart Objects work a little differently.

photoshop_blur_selection_05

This time it looks like the selection is having no effect;

photoshop_blur_selection_06

However, when you click ‘OK’ you’ll see that a mask has been added to the Smart Filters;

photoshop_blur_selection_07

This mask will mask out all Smart Filters, even if you deselect and run some other filter.

Because the blur takes the surrounding pixels into account and then adds the blur there’s no need for the Bleeding Amount, as this is governed by the blur itself. You can manipulate the mask of course, maybe a little Gaussian Blur to help it transition a little better. 

photoshop_blur_selection_08

About Eric Renno (435 Articles)
Eric’s background in video editing with Adobe Premier led to his interest, and then obsession, with Photoshop. Starting TipSquirrel.com as a hobby he is proud to have gathered together and be a part of The Photoshop Nuts. Known as only “TipSquirrel” for two years, Eric ‘went public’ when he was a finalist in The Next Adobe Photoshop Evangelist competition. He’s also been a finalist in Deke’s Techniques Photoshop Challenge. While still taking on some freelance work, Eric has recently become a Lecturer at Peterborough’s Media and Journalism Centre where he enjoys sharing his knowledge as well as learning new skills. This realisation that he loves to teach has made Eric look at altering his career path.

1 Comment on Photoshop Blur Gallery and Selections

  1. You have created some extra authentic collection.It’s a marvelous job.

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