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Phuntography #6) Afterglow.

If you haven't heard of Dooce then you've obviously been living in a parallel universe without food, water, or the internet. Heather (Dooce) is well known amongst the blogging community for her mouthy contributions to the world at large. She's so well known, in fact, that her employers came in to the know of her 'contributions' and promptly fired her for the things she wrote on her personal site. Let this be a lesson to never, ever to blog about work or your co-workers. Unless you want 55,000 hits per day. Then, you know, it's okay.

I digress. Heather posts pictures, lots and lots of pictures (thankfully none of poop), on her site and started fielding a lot of questions about how she achieved the cool "glowie" effect. Was it camera? Was it Photoshop? WAS IT MADNESS, I MEAN MAGIC?! Indeed, it's madness Photoshop and a lovely little technique that can give *your* photographs a nice, luminous effect. She calls is the "Dooce effect", I call it the "Afterglow". After all, who doesn't like afterglow? Check out some of my examples here, here, and here if you're in the mood to be convinced. After all, convincing is one of my specialties *battes eyes*.

Chill and serve with a nice stiff drink. Everything gets a little easier with a martini in hand anyway.

Step 1: After opening your photo in Photoshop, click on "Layer" and then "Duplicate Layer..." to duplicate your image.

Step 2: Select the new layer on your layer palette (should be the one on top) and click on "Filter", "Blur", and then "Gaussian Blur".

Step 3: Generally speaking, set the radius on anything from 1.0 to 4.0 (for the example below I used 3.0). The higher the number the more glow you'll achieve.

Step 4: Set the blend mode for the layer to "Multiply" or "Overlay". I'm giving you choices here so try both (and a few other while you're at it) to see how they look.

Step 5: No matter which blend mode you choose the coloring will be completely messed after you apply it. This is where you adjust the Levels and Curves to bring the image back in to the land of the living. One way to do this is by clicking on "Layer", "New Adjustment Layer" and then add in Levels or Curves respectably. I've been asked before why I don't just alter the layer I'm working with directly. The reason I like adding adjustment layers is they alter the picture without actually ALTERING the picture. This method gives me the option of going back in and tweaking the levels or curves if I decide that they just didn't work the way I wanted them to. In a world where I enjoy being bossy, I enjoy making things my bitch, even if it's a couple of layers in photoshop.

Whoala. Your picture has achieved a state of zen afterglow.