Creating an Angelic Glow in Photoshop

Sometimes, a little blur can add a soft, romantic mood or angelic glow that can improve glamour photos, pictures of kids, or even something as mundane as a flower. The secret is to apply only enough blurring to provide the soft effect you want without completely obliterating your original subject. This assumes, of course, that your subject doesn’t deserve obliteration, that the kids are your own (or those of a close friend or relative), and are, in fact, of that rare angelic variety. You won’t want to use this effect on other subjects, such as men, who generally like a rugged, masculine appearance (minus any hint of an angelic glow). Many senior citizens regard the age lines on their faces as badges of distinction earned over a long, rewarding life. Don’t try softening them up with glowing effects, either. This project combines Gaussian Blur with the Photoshop Opacity feature (which enables you to easily make one layer partially transparent so that the one underneath shows through) and the Merge Layers mode. I chose an image of a young girl. The original photo isn’t bad, but I wanted to make the girl’s face glow with an inner life of its own. To add an angelic glow to your little angel, just follow these steps:
1. Open the image in Photoshop.
2. Choose Layer-->Duplicate Layer to create a copy of the image layer.
3. Select Image-->Filter-->Blur-->Gaussian Blur.
Gaussian Blur softens the upper layer, producing an airy glow.
4. Move the Radius slider to the right to produce a moderate amount of blur, and then click OK to apply the blurring effect.
5. In the Layers palette, choose Lighten from the Modes pop-up menu.
6. Use the Opacity slider (click the right-pointing arrow to access the slider) to reduce the amount of glow (if it’s too much for your taste).
7. Choose Layer-->Flatten Image to combine all the layers.
Experiment with different amounts of Gaussian Blur until you find the perfect glowing effect.

When Photoshop applies the Lighten mode as it merges two layers, it looks at each pixel in the top layer and its corresponding pixel in the layer below it. That pixel in the final merged layer is always the lighter of the two. The result is an image in which Photoshop replaces darker pixels with lighter ones, but doesn’t change the light pixels at all.