YES- i know ive asked this b4 but the replies i had didnt work. Im told that u can add the distance render to a layer (above the colour render) u then do somenthing to this layer (makeit a alpha layer or somenthing...) and then apply the gausian blur. Photoshop then applies the blur based on the darkness/lightness of the distance render layer. I have Photoshop 5.5 - and i cant sus this technique out! Can anyone please help with clear details or with a tutorial link that realy works! Thanx in advance 4 any help. Steve.

What you need to do is to create a selection out of your distance render then use gausian blur through that selection. There are several ways of of creating the mask the simplest way to explain it is to do the following. 1. Load both images into photoshop 2. Select the normal render and go to channel palette and create a new channel. This additional channel is sometimes called an alpha channel or masking channel. 3. Click on this channel so it is the only active channel. 4. Now go to your second distance render. 5. Select all and choose copy from the edit menu. 6. Now go back to your normal render with new channel active. 7. Use paste from the edit menu to paste you distance render into the alpha channel of your normal render. 8.Now click on the RGB combined channel view. So you can see you normal render in full color. Notice the alpha channel should not be visable. 9. Now we load the alpha channel as a selection. Go to Select>Load Selection and choose the alpha channel you just created. 10. You should now have a selection though which you can blur or sharpen ect.... Note: you may need to invert your selection to get the desired effect. jstuartj

I have updated the mask tutorial at Brycetech to show one way of doing this. http://www.brycetech.com/tutor/bryce/mask3.html luck BT