focus

Hello, friends. I just today set down in the relatively warm embrace of Southern California. (Relative by comparison to Colorado, which has been anywhere from brisk to cheek-freezing cold.) Which means that after a lovely string of trips to such faraway places as Avignon, Amsterdam, and Big Sky, Montana, I have arrived--rested and restored--with the intent to record more videos for my beloved online training provider, lynda.com. Although the nature of those videos is Top Secret, I can assure you: They will be authoritative, comprehensive, and multitudinous.

While you await those flicks (they won't be available for months), I have this one for you. It falls under the heading Photoshop Top 40 and goes by the name Gaussian Blur. Someone new to Photoshop might be tempted to dismiss Gaussian Blur as something that makes stuff blurry. But the stalwart GBlur goes to the heart of what makes Photoshop Photoshop. The term Gaussian might be best described as the thing that makes another thing drift eventually and incrementally into oblivion. Gaussian Blur underlies the Feather command, the Drop Shadow layer effect, and even Unsharp Mask. Simply put, it is the heart of detail-, depth-, and focus-enhancement in Photoshop. Read more »