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.

In the recent Photoshop Top 40: The Contest (there will be another!), a few of you listed Gaussian Blur among the features that you used. Which is weird, because I hadn’t annouced it yet. It was as if you read my mind. But I bet you didn’t read this: All photographs used in this video come to us from image vendor Fotolia. (Okay, you knew that. But here’s the news:) The veiled lady is image #4298260 from Coka. Then Colleen told me enough with the gorgeous women already, so I brought in a swell-looking dude, image #965628 from poco_bw. For an exclusive dekeOnline deal, click this link.

(For a list of all Photoshop Top 40 videos thus far, click here.)

Photoshop Top 40 is available as a downloadable podcast from iTunes. Click here to subscribe. dekePod subscribers will get the videos automatically.