Softening a pic::June 26

Today, I was thinking about roses. Specifically, spots of tiny wilt on the edges of petals or itty bitty brown spots on an otherwise perfect rose. Because (spoiler alert): Nothing *real* is perfect, whether it is a person or a flower.

So, I thought about making the pic just a bit softer, to hide the imperfections a bit, and also, well, just to soften the pic a bit. When I looked at filters that attach to the camera lens that do that sort of thing, I was aghast when I saw that they were over $200. Holy moly!! So I looked up how to do it in photoshop and I found this article:


http://digital-photography-school.com/photoshop-high-pass-softening

Then I set about to try it out. (Why is it that everything is harder than it looks?? Oh well, after doing it a few times it will be easier.) My version of photoshop was different than her version, so it took me a while of poking around to find the same buttons she was telling me to click on, but it all worked out in the end. This was the result, with the before and after pics:

It will be helpful on portraits too. And it doesn't cost $200+ dollars. AND I can choose to blur one part of the pic and leave the other part unblurred, which will be helpful sometimes.

So tell me, which do you like best? Before.... or after?

Have a super terrific day!