I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile. There are one million ways to get the exact same effect in Photoshop and you probably already have your own ways of doing this, but in case it helps anyone anywhere - here are two eeeHEASY (heh, heh) ways to get two effects that I use all the time for the usual little design jobsies that come up in one’s service for the Lord.

Exhibit A: You want something more interesting than a plain background for your Christmas card/birth announcement/wedding invitation so you start with a colorful photo.

In Photoshop, open duplicate the layer then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and adjust it to a nice state of um….blurriness.

Too easy. Here’s something I put together with this technique recently.

Exhibit B: A gradient. When I found this technique on some PS tut blog I was giddy with joy at the simplicity (oh the simplicity) of this technique. I’ve used it on things that really needed no gradient at all just because it was too easy.

Fill your background with any color (it could even be a photo)

Make a new layer. Use your polygonal lasso tool to make a shape like so, and fill it with black.

Then run the same Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur on the layer with the black shape.

And you’ve got yourself an entirely adjustable gradient layer. Praise the Lord! Here’s something I used this technique with. Gives stuff a nice little zing.

Sniff. In the interests of honesty and full disclosure, this post was partly made for the purpose of highlighting this very last image that you see here - the one with the great big 2009 on it. I’m oh so pleased with it and the Lord saw fit to break me by not allowing it to be used for reasons that make sense, but it still hurts in places deep inside of me. I had to make a different cover and my heart just wasn’t in it. Ah, well.

Hope these few novice tidbitietes of information have helped in some way. I’ve made this post after a number of glasses of not halfway bad White Zinfandel (I love that I can say that in public) while I simultaneously try to listen to Nat King Cole and cultivate my budding friendship with the new friend I think I have made in Florence (name drop) over Skype, so if this hasn’t made as much sense as I think it has, that’s well….kind of the reason. God bless you.