Dreamy Haze Tutorial

Quickie Tutorial for Gayl

Just a little warning, I have a very big monitor. My resolution is 1680x1050. I'm running the sims windowed in a much smaller size, about 1024x768. I do this because I don't want bothered trying to redo my crop settings, etc. I am also running Windows Vista. Shouldn't change anything, but if something looks "weird" and you're running XP, that's why. :)

So, the first thing you need to do is make sure you have Photoshop loaded and your picture waiting on its screen. Below is the raw image, but it's been sized down to 600x480, which is the standardized size of my story pictures. As you can see, it's uncropped and everything, you can see the red "pause" lines.

You may already have an image ready to go, but I still need to crop. I usually crop because there can be a lot of useless space in an image that takes away from the focus of the image. So I'm going to whip out my crop tool and get this all ready to go.

Hooray! All cropped and ready to go. I have my crop set so that all my images are uniform. No matter how I crop something, it will always resize to 600x480. Very useful!

Now we're going to duplicate the background layer. There's two ways of doing this. I use the hotkey, Ctrl+J, but you can always just click your way there, too. The image below describes how to do it in detail. Essentially you just need to right-click your only layer and then select Duplicate Layer. When the dialogue box pops up, just hit 'Okay'.

Now we're going to apply a blur to this second. Make sure you select the second layer before continuing. Go to the top menu and find Filter > Blur > Box Blur. I accidentally messed up the numbering on the picture, sorry about that. 'Hover' should be labelled as '2'.

A dialogue box will pop up and ask you to further customize the filter. I have my box blur set to '5'. Also, make sure you check the preview box! It's very helpful. You can see what the filter will look like on your actual image. Very good for judging how much of a filter you'll need. Once you're satisified, click 'Okay'.

Now it's time for the fun part--blending! That blur is a bit oppressive, isn't it? It's like being drunk in a video game. We can change that. Go to your Layers window and make sure your second layer is already selected. Then, click on the dropdown box that says 'Normal'.

It will expand upwards into a very long list sectioned off into group. We want to find 'Screen'. Screen is absolutely perfect for making any image look 'washed out' or 'dreamy'. Unfortunately, you have to use it with caution. Taking pictures with screen in mind is a very good idea. Screen can sometimes go a step too far, especially if you're using a lightning mod! Planning your lighting around screen is a good idea. Once you've found it, click and watch it work.

How's that for some dreamy atmsophere? It looks all misty and a little surreal. However, we're not done yet. More blending!

Go back to your Layers window. See the little boxes that are labelled Opacity and Fill? We're going to play with those. I've set my values in the eighties and that seems to help a little. Make sure you've selected your blurred layer when you do this!

Feel free to experiment. Less is more, sometimes. I'm keeping mine as it shows in the picture. Once you're finished, take a good look at the image. Are you satisfied? Is it too washed out? We can fix that without going back into the game. We're going to add another layer.

Right-click on your original background layer and duplicate it. Make sure it is between your background layer and your blurred layer. Now, go back to the dropdown blend box and select 'Soft Light'. Soft Light is an amazing blending tool--invaluable to all simmers hoping to edit their pictures! It'll put some color, but not too much, and keep the blur/dreamy haze of the image.

If you find it to be too much, you can feel free to blend it further by adjusting it's Opacity and Fill!

Below is my finished image. Looks pretty good from here. Hopefully yours turned out, too! You can get more complicated with blending and whatnot, but this is just a basic sort of run through. You can also use this tutorial and replace Box Blur with Lens or even Gaussian, if you so desire. You can also experiment with the other layer blends, like Overlay, Hue, etc. All of them are useful in their own way... but Soft Light is a good standby for any occassion.

If you need more help, just email me!

Please don't reproduce or copy this tutorial without asking first! And please, please, don't claim it as your own work. I'm very nice! Just email me if you want to post this somewhere or reference it. I really don't mind, I just appreciate a heads up. Thanks! -Mao