How do I blur photos in iPhoto 11?

Question

How do I blur photos in iPhoto 11?

In the older versions of iPhoto, the sharpness slider default position was in the middle. Slide to the right {+} and the picture sharpened, slide to the left {-} and it blurred. Now that the slider starts from the left, there seems to be no way to decrease the sharpness (I didn't blur often, but it was handy for a few shots).

The weird thing is, is that when you hold the cursor over the Sharpness control, you get conflicting messages :

over the word Sharpness, the tooltip says Sharpen the focus
but over the slider itself, it says Sharpen or soften the focus

The implication is that there is a way to turn the sharpness slider into a soften slider, but neither Control nor Option achieves this.

Does anyone know how to make the Sharpness slider into a Soften slider? (There doesn't seem to be any logical reason why Apple would simply remove one of the features in iPhoto).

iMac Core i5 4GB RAM-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 18, 2014 6:03 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,290 points

Jan 18, 2014 8:48 AM in response to christopher rigby1

Apple frequently add and remove features, logically or not - for instance, the removal of iPhoto sharing in v9.5. Denoise is the closest you'll get.

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Answer 2

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Jan 18, 2014 8:47 AM in response to christopher rigby1

As far as I know there is no way to soften (or unsharpen) a photo in iPhoto

see P 145 in iPhoto the missing manual-

LN

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Answer 3

Ben Bloks

Level 4

2,355 points

Jan 18, 2014 10:31 AM in response to christopher rigby1

Christopher,

Indeed rather confusing,

The only way I see now is to use the effects with someting called the "edge blur". Or the retouch brush. But this is still very limmited.

Personnaly I started using "Focus 2" from Macphun. Yoou can set this as your default external editing software from within iPhoto. It's a payed app. from the appstore, but very powerfull. Starting to really like the guys from Macphun. Using Snapheal (pro) also togehter with Aperture. Much better then the tools in Aperture itsself.

I don't have any involvement with this company, but simply love some of their stuff.

HtH

Ben

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Answer 4

Jan 18, 2014 10:51 AM in response to Ben Bloks

Thanks Ben

I could actually do it in Elements, which is my external editor - but I don't like to do that for what I regard as "the simple things" which iPhoto offers. In other words, I use iPhoto 90% of the time, and Elements for probably less than 10% of editing.

Just a shame that Apple has decreed that no-one ever wants to soften a picture

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Answer 5

Ben Bloks

Level 4

2,355 points

Jan 19, 2014 1:47 AM in response to christopher rigby1

You're welcome,

Stopped using photoshop (elements) already since their version 5. Don't miss it at all. Today I mostly work with Aperture ( sometimes iPhoto) and use the Macphun stuff as a plug-in. It's simple to use and very powerfull

Works great for me.

Ben

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Answer 6

Jan 20, 2014 6:03 AM in response to Ben Bloks

I would certainly use Aperture if I shot RAW, but my Lumix FZ38 - though it can shoot RAW - came out in tests as not worth using as 1) it's a very small sensor and 2) its Venus JPEG engine is very good.

I do also have Photoshop CS2, which is the only thing that now makes my ancient Canoscan scanner work (VueScan also, but I'm not prepared to pay $40 when Photoshop does it for free) - also Photoshop supports Action macros and CMYK which Elements doesn't. I once bought Pixelmator too, so I have 'graphics editor' overload!

Having said that, I do 90% of my photo editing in iPhoto, and find '11 is quite capable. It's just an annoyance that they took away the Blur feature. (I had a look at Macphun, but I don't need to pay for yet more editing software 😀).

Actually, I just remembered I also have Back In Focus, which is special sharpening software - maybe it does the opposite too? I'll have to have a look at that.

Thanks.

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