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Sometimes the best way to draw attention to something is to draw attention away from something else. The bride doesn't have to wear the biggest, most ostentatious dress to stand out against her bridesmaids; she can instead dress them in colors that blend in with the flowers — and by contrast, the bride stands out. The same is true for photos, especially those with a lot of content that you need to keep but don't want people to notice too much.
 | With blurring, you reduce the color and brightness differences so that pixels look much closer to each other in terms of their color levels, brightness, and contrast. You can go too far with blurring and end up with something that no one can recognize; conversely, you can blur not enough, leaving the content as distracting as ever. You need to find a happy medium where the viewer can still recognize objects, but nobody spends much time looking at them. |
You have choices as to how to apply blurring. You can use your image editor's Blur tool, or you can use the Blur filters. Many image editors offer specialized Blur filters that do cool things, such as making an image look like it's whipping past the camera (the Motion Blur) or like it's spinning in place (the Radial Blur). The plain old Blur filter simply blurs the entire image or a selection therein — it's as simple as that.
To apply a blur to everything but the focus of the image, follow these steps:
1. Select the object or area that you don't want to blur.
You can do this step on an image that's all on one layer. Or, if your software supports layers, you can select the object or area and then cut it to its own layer to keep it separate from the rest of the image during the blurring process.
2. If you're working all on one layer, invert the selection so that you can blur everything but the selection.
Most image editors, including Corel PhotoPaint, Paint Shop Pro, and the Adobe Photoshop products, let you invert a selection by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I (or Command+Shift+I if you're using a Mac).
With the not-to-be-blurred section protected, you can begin blurring the rest of the picture.
3. Click your image editor's Blur tool to activate it and then set the way that you want the tool to work by choosing the brush size and strength.
4. Begin dragging the mouse in the area that you want to blur. You can go over some areas more than once, increasing the blurring effect in those spots.
5. When you finish blurring the area, turn off the selection and view your results.
If you opt to use the Blur filter, after making the selection and inverting it so that you can blur everything but the selected area, you can choose your editor's Blur filter. The blurring effect is uniform throughout the selection, and you can intensify it only by repeating the command.
Unlike the regular Blur command, the special blurs that you find in most image editors have dialog boxes that let you set how much blurring you want to occur and exactly what special effect the blur achieves.
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