• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Downloads
    • Adobe Photography Plans
    • Capture One
    • DxO PhotoLab
    • DxO Nik Collection
    • Exposure X
    • ON1 Photo RAW
    • Skylum Luminar
    • Aurora HDR
  • Editing A-Z
  • About

Life after Photoshop

  • Lightroom
  • Capture One
  • DxO PhotoLab
  • Nik Collection
  • Exposure X
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • Aurora HDR

Try this soft focus effect on landscapes

August 16, 2017 by Rod Lawton

You normally associate soft focus effects with portraits, but they can work on all kinds of images, adding a romantic, dreamy feel to an everyday scene. Landscapes, for example, are often given a dramatic, brooding look when sometimes the emotion we feel is much lighter.

  • DxO Nik Collection 3 review
  • More Nik Collection articles
  • Try/download the DxO Nik Collection
Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow soft focus

Here’s an example. This tree-lined avenue felt bright, airy and summery, but somehow the picture doesn’t really do it justice. The camera has done a great job of capturing the light and the details and the colour exactly as they were, but not how they were experienced at the time. Capturing reality exactly is all very well – if you’re a photocopier salesperson – but most of us want to add something of our own feelings to a scene.

So here’s a pretty simple soft-focus technique that can add a softer and more romantic look to practically any outdoor image. It actually consists of two things – a soft focus effect which spreads the highlights in the picture and makes them more diffuse, and a simple saturation increase.

As it happens, the Glamour Glow filter in Color Efex Pro, part of the Nik Collection, does them both at the same time. What’s more, it lets you stack more than one instance of a filter, so that if you like the effect you can simply double it as we’ve done here.

Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow soft focus

01: Different soft focus effects will produce different results – it all depends on the software you’re using. Ideally, though, you want one that does what we’ve got here, softening and spreading the light but still retaining clear object edges. It’s made the leaves in these trees soft and airy without smudging them into a blur.

02: Increasing the saturation will make some colours much stronger than they are naturally. In the original scene, the shaded areas of this sidewalk had only the faintest blue tone from the blue sky above, but the increased saturation has made this much stronger. Is it a problem? Not at all – it adds to the rich colour palette in the edited picture.

03: One application of the Glamour Glow filter wasn’t enough, but Color Efex Pro lets us add another. You don’t have to use the same settings both times, of course – in this instance we wanted the maximum Glow value again, but only a modest increase in saturation. Doubling up on filters in this way can, in theory, degrade the image quality, but unless this is obvious and severe, getting the overall ‘look’ just how you want it is much more important.

So here’s the finished image. An everyday scene has been re-imagined as a kind of idealised summer’s day and it now works as more than just a record of the scene. This saturated soft-focus effect works really well on sunlit landscapes generally, and if you don’t already have the Nik Collection you can download it free from the Google Nik Collection website. Don’t waste too much time, though, because it may not be around forever.

Color Efex Pro Glamour Glow soft focus

Related

Filed Under: Nik Collection, Tutorials Tagged With: Color Efex Pro, Nik Collection, Soft focus

Primary Sidebar

Get the Nik Collection

Reviews

What is the best image editing software?

February 26, 2021

DxO PhotoLab 4 review

November 2, 2020

Exposure X6 review

October 9, 2020

More reviews

  • Lightroom CC review (2020)
  • Lightroom Classic review
  • DxO PhotoLab vs Lightroom vs Capture One – which is best for RAW files?
  • Best image cataloguing software: tools to keep your images organised
  • Skylum Luminar 4.3 review
  • ON1 Photo RAW 2020.5 review
  • ON1 360 review
  • Analog Efex Pro 2 review
  • Perspective Efex review
  • DxO Nik Collection 3 review
  • Exposure X5 review
  • Capture One 20 review

Contact

Email lifeafterphotoshop@gmail.com

Life after Photoshop A-Z

A

  • Aberrations
  • Accent-AI filter (Skylum)
  • ACROS (Fujifilm)
  • Adjustment brush
  • ... more
  • Adjustment layer
  • Adobe Bridge
  • Adobe Camera Raw
  • Adobe RGB
  • Affinity Photo
  • AI (artificial intelligence)
  • Album
  • Alien Skin Exposure X
  • Analog
  • Analog Efex Pro
  • Apple Aperture
  • Apple Photos
  • Aspect ratio
  • As shot (white balance)
  • Astia
  • Augmented Sky
  • Aurora HDR
  • Auto white balance
  • Axial chromatic aberration

B

  • Barrel distortion
  • Batch processing
  • Bits and bit depth
  • Black and white
  • ... more
  • Black and white filters
  • Blend modes
  • Bokeh
  • Borders and frames
  • Boundary Warp (Lightroom)
  • Bracketing
  • Brush
  • Burn Edges (Silver Efex Pro)

C

  • C4K video
  • Camera calibration
  • Camera Kit (Analog Efex Pro)
  • Capture One
  • ... more
  • Cataloguing software
  • Channel
  • Chromatic aberration
  • Clarity
  • Clipping
  • Cloud storage
  • CMYK
  • Collection
  • Color adjustment
  • Color cast
  • Color Efex Pro
  • Color fringing
  • Color labels
  • Color management
  • Color model
  • Color noise
  • Color space
  • Color temperature
  • Composition
  • Constrain Crop
  • Contrast
  • Contrast filter
  • Control Point
  • Corner shading
  • Creative Cloud (Adobe)
  • Cropping
  • Cross Processing
  • Culling images
  • Curves

D

  • Darks
  • Dehaze
  • Depth of field
  • Detail Extractor
  • ... more
  • Dfine
  • Diffraction
  • Distortion
  • Distortion correction
  • Dodging and burning
  • Dropbox
  • DxO FilmPack
  • DxO Optics Pro
  • DxO PhotoLab
  • DxO ViewPoint
  • Dynamic range

E

  • Effects
  • Export
  • Exposure latitude
  • Exposure value (EV)
  • ... more
  • Exposure X

F

  • Film simulation
  • Folders
  • Frame rate
  • Full HD

G

  • Gamut
  • Geometry (Lightroom)
  • Glow effect
  • Golden hour
  • ... more
  • Gradient mask
  • Graduated filters
  • Grain
  • Guided Upright (Lightroom)

H

  • HDR
  • HDR Efex Pro
  • HD video
  • Highlight recovery
  • ... more
  • Highlights
  • Histogram
  • History
  • HSL adjustments
  • Hue/Saturation

I

  • Import
  • Instagram
  • ISO

J

  • JPEG
  • JPEG vs RAW

K

  • Keywords

L

  • Lab mode
  • Laowa 9mm f2.8
  • Lateral chromatic aberration
  • Layers
  • ... more
  • Lens corrections
  • Lens profile
  • Levels
  • Light Falloff
  • Light leak
  • Lightroom
  • Lightroom CC
  • Lightroom Mobile
  • Lightroom web
  • Lights
  • Linear gradient
  • Loawa 9mm f/2.8
  • Local adjustments
  • Loupe
  • Luma curve
  • Luminance (contrast) noise
  • Luminar
  • Lutify.me
  • LUTs

M

  • MacPhun Creative Kit
  • Masks
  • Metadata
  • Microcontrast (DxO)
  • ... more
  • Miniature effect
  • Mobile photography
  • Monitor calibration
  • Moonlight

N

  • Nik Collection
  • Noir
  • Noise
  • Noise reduction
  • ... more
  • Non-destructive editing

O

  • Old Photo (Color Efex Pro)
  • ON1 360
  • ON1 Perfect Suite
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • ... more
  • Organising
  • Orton Effect
  • Overlays

P

  • Panoramas
  • Parametric curves
  • Perspective correction
  • Perspective Efex
  • ... more
  • PhotoDirector
  • Photography Plan (Adobe)
  • Photoshop
  • Photoshop Elements
  • Picktorial
  • Picture Control/Style
  • Pincushion distortion
  • Pixelmator
  • Plug-ins
  • Point curve
  • Polarising filter
  • Portraits
  • Post crop or pre crop vignette
  • Presets
  • Printer profile
  • Print sizes
  • Profiles
  • Provia

Q

  • Quick fixes

R

  • Radial filter
  • Radial gradient
  • Radial mask
  • Ratings
  • ... more
  • RAW+JPEG
  • RAW file
  • RAW processing
  • Recipes (Color Efex Pro)
  • Repair tool (DxO)
  • Replace Color
  • Retouching
  • RGB

S

  • S-shaped curve
  • Saturation
  • Selection
  • Selective colour
  • ... more
  • Selective Tone (DxO)
  • Sensei (Adobe)
  • Sensor size
  • Shadow recovery
  • Shadows
  • Sharpener Pro
  • Sharpening
  • Sidecar file
  • Signal to noise ratio
  • Silver Efex Pro
  • Skylum
  • Slow motion
  • Smart Album or Collection
  • Smart Object
  • Smart Preview (Lightroom)
  • SmugMug
  • Snapseed
  • Snapshot (editing)
  • Soft focus
  • Solarisation
  • Sony A7R II
  • Sony A6000
  • Split toning
  • Spot removal
  • sRGB
  • Straighten
  • Structure
  • Subscription software
  • Sunlight filter (Color Efex Pro)

T

  • Targeted adjustment
  • Temperature (white balance)
  • Textures
  • TIFF format
  • ... more
  • Tilt shift
  • Timelapse
  • Tint (white balance)
  • Tone curve
  • Tone Enhancer (ON1)
  • Toning
  • Topaz Labs
  • Transform

U

  • Upright tool (Lightroom)

V

  • Variants (Capture One Pro)
  • Velvia
  • Versions (Lightroom)
  • Vibrance
  • ... more
  • Video
  • Vignette
  • Vignetting
  • Virtual Copy (Lightroom)
  • Viveza
  • Volume deformation or anamorphosis

W

  • Warmth
  • Watermark
  • White balance
  • White balance presets
  • ... more
  • Working space

X

  • X-Trans sensor

Z

  • Zone System

0-9

  • 4K UHD
  • 4K video
  • 8-bit image
  • 1:1 ratio
  • ... more
  • 14-bit RAW
  • 16-bit image
  • 3:2 ratio
  • 4:3 ratio
  • 16:9

Copyright © 2021 · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OK