Feeding Santa's Reindeer (faux Bokeh)

[susan]

Suggestion. When you are blending the Gaussian blur layer with the layer with your girls, blend them with a soft light. That way, the layer of the girls has the same light as the old background and doesn't change the light so drastically === the girls are still sitting "on top" of the back ground. The blur tends to darken the part of the image that it contains that is why when you blend, you need to soften the light ... hope that helps. :-)

[Mad Aussie]

I think seeing as you have all the elements at home still, and can recreate the shot as you would like, I'd do that.

[theantiquetiger]

I think seeing as you have all the elements at home still, and can recreate the shot as you would like, I'd do that.

Unfortunately, all the decorations were taken down two days ago because my daughter's birthday is today and my wife doesn't want any Christmas to interfer with her birthday.

I would do it though because I got my 50mm f1.8 in this afternoon.

[vyeko]

This techniques will not work on this image.This is only for image which already have some bokeh and you like to be a little more.You need to understand how blur works.When you apply this filter all pixels spreed around (a little magnification of your image) because that you get halo around subject. Only solution is if you enlarge cut out subject a bit or change a size of blurred background. I hope that is understandable.