Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Star Diffusion Effect

The Star Diffusion effect can be created to every photo using Photoshop. The Star Diffusion is a technique used to focus on the main subject of the photo. It creates a four point star blur in the background of the main focus. In our photo of the student parading down the hallway, we used it to create a main focus on the student and less focus on the background or the rest of the hallway. These are the steps to create a Star Diffusion:
before

1.       Open an image on photoshop
2.       Go to the layer and click duplicate layer
a.       When a box pops up press ok
3.       Repeat step two again
4.       Click on top layer
5.       Click on filter
6.       Choose blur
7.       Then motion blur
8.       Change the angle to 45 degrees
9.       Change the distance to the 200 or whenever you can start to see stars forming in the background
10.   Press ok
11.   Turn off first layer (press the eye ball)
12.   Go to the second layer
13.   Go filter
14.   Choose blur
15.   Then choose motion blur
16.   Change the angle to -45 degrees
17.   Change distance to 200 or whenever you can start to see stars forming in the background
18.   Press ok
19.   Choose top layer
20.   Go to the blend mode Change  it to screen
21.   Go to layer
22.   Press merge down
23.   Change the blend mode to screen
24.   Go to image
25.   Then adjustment
26.   Then levels
27.   change the levels to where it begins to look right
28.   Take the eraser tool
29.    drop the opacity down to 30-50
30.   Erase the focus image where it is necessary
31.   Flatten image and save as a jpeg

after