I'm trying to come up with a way to duplicate an older visual technique. Years ago (I don't think too many people do it still) a camera operator (especially in motion film) would either smear a little Vaseline on the lens or put a stocking over it to blur up the picture, as in the one above. I'm guessing that these images were a little overexposed too. There's often a little bit of a lens flare effect on highlights in the image.

I remember a technique like this being used a lot in television dramas in the 1960's, a few years into color. Star Trek (the original) was one I recall that seemed to use it for every close up of a female character.

I'm trying to figure out a way to duplicate the effect in Photoshop, on an image that was created normally. I'm hoping I can use this for post-processing images I make in rendering software, since I don't have an actual lens to smear up. Anyone have any thoughts on how I might proceed? I'm using CS4.

Thanks in advance.

try Blur in all its forms ..
i think the blur fx that uses a form will do nice if you use a square form
Smear or motion can do nice things too i usaly mix effect in layers to reach best results..

Chris

Cool, thanks, I'll give that a try.

Adding to BAR-CODEs suggestion I would duplicate your original image to another layer and then apply your blur effect to the new layer.  Play around with Motion, Lens or Shape blur.  Once you have the angle or type of blur effect that you want you can then use a very soft brush with low opacity to erase parts of the blurred image to gradually reveal the sharp original one underneath just so that you can maintain the detail where you want it in your image.

Here is a link to one of the better methods of turning a colour image into a black and white one.

http://www.phototakers.com/articles/articles/30.html

Those are great ideas, thank you.

Another thing to play with - copy onto its own layer (Ctrl+j), blur it however you like to blur things - motion, gaussian, lens, etc..

Try any or a combination of these:

1 - simply lower the opacity (and I mean like down to 10% - MAYBE 20%).

2 - change the layer mode to Screen, and hit Ctrl+L to bring up Levels (or attach a Levels Adjustment Layer so you can keep playing with it before committing to a final byt Flattening the document) and move your blacks up as well as your middle tones to make it more of the fuzzies of ONLY the very brightest of areas.

3 - Change to Screen like above, and bring up Hue/Saturation (either hit Ctrl+U or make a Hue/Sat Adjustment Layer for further editing) and check Colorize and change it to a "coffee-like" color tint. Gives an old-timey fel of sepia-ish (without being over the top about it) and lower the blurred Layer's opacity to taste.

Some thoughts - have fun1

-Lew

And excellent thoughts they are, thank you.

I do this all the time. Duplicate the layer. Apply gaussian blur set at, maybe 5 pixels. Apply the layer using overlay, soft light, luminance, or whichever more you prefer. They all give different effects. I do it so often I basically made an action to do it quickly so I don't have to futz around.

One thing I do (well, a SET, really... and yes, I made an Action for it because I do it to ALL my product photography) to bring out shadow and highlight details is apply a Shadow/Highlight adjustment, dupe the layer, desaturate 50%, change the mode to Soft Light, then bring up Levels and clip the blacks and whites to taste.

You've just brought out or made more prominent a whole lot of shadow and highlight details and made it punchier without it becoming gawdy and cartoonish.

-Lew

I'll play around with all of those ideas, thank you. I haven't done an action in Photoshop before, but I used to do them all in time in PSP. I was thinking I might apply this to a series of still frames from a rendering program, so being able to automate it sounds like the way to go.

Thanks much.

One more thought.  If I remember correctly, the vaseline technique could be used at either the photograph stage or in the printing.  If you smeared it on the camera, it was primarily the highlights that went fuzzy.  On the enlarger (printing), it blew out the shadows.

If you are trying to replicate a specific effect, the blur functions and layer blending should be ok, but you'll probably have to use different degrees of blur for shadows and highlights.  The example used vaseline at just the photo stage, I suspect.

Either method was intollerably sticky, but the smudge was more controllable than stockings.  So multiple layers with different degrees of smudge might be worth a try.

Now that's interesting... I never knew about the idea of smearing the enlarger lens. That sounds very interesting.

It occurs to me that I might get some interesting effects if I make two layers, adjust the levels down on one and up on the other, blur them separately, then mix them back together. Might even be fun to try it on an HDR image and flatten it back out afterward.

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.