You may have a nice photo that would look much better if you could just add some kind of special touch. Well, let insideTonic lend you a hand: even if you’re not the artistic type, you can still obtain really eye-catching results by following this simple, easy-to-use Photoshop trick.
First of all, open your image and select the area you’d like to emphasize using the Marquee tool. Then copy it to a new layer by pressing Ctrl+J.
Select the new layer you just created and click on the Layer Style button. Add a Drop Shadow effect (feel free to customize options) and a Stroke effect, so that the area looks like a postcard with a white border.
Press Ctrl+T to activate the Transformation tool and move the selected area around to create an overlapping effect. When you’re done, press Enter.
Now it’s time to play with the rest of the picture. First, click on the background layer to make it the active layer. You have several options here: you can either apply a blur effect through the Filter > Blur > Radial Blur tool…
Or soften the image by creating a new layer over the background, filling it with white and then adjusting opacity…
Or even turn the background into black and white with the Hue/Saturation tool.
There you go. You’ve just added your own personal touch to the picture.
