Blur image effect

[AndyD]

HI,
I wondered whether there was a quick way to blur part of an image? I have a photo of a shopfront and rather than crop the image I thought I would simply blur the neighbouring shops/buildings as they are pretty ghastly looking. Is there a tool or technique anyone could recommend please?

[gwpriester]

Make a clone of the image, blur the image and apply a circular transparency.

[gwpriester]

Here's an example

[AndyD]

Thanks Gary, but how did you blur the second image...? I haven't blurred anything ever... or not since I used psp.

[gwpriester]

Photo Tool > Blur Sharpness.

The maximum blur with the slider is -100 but you can manually enter a negative number. I used -300 which is a moderate amount of blur. -600 would be even more blurred.

[Acorn]

Andy, what Xara application are you using? "Xara 4" is in your About Me detail.

There are blurs in Live effects and there are blurs under Photo Filter Presets.

You can blur with displaced and scaled transparencies of an image.

You can blur with a CSS3 style:

<style>#blur {
-webkit-filter: blur(10px);
-moz-filter: blur(10px);
-o-filter: blur(10px);
-ms-filter: blur(10px);
filter: blur(10px);
}
</style>

Acorn

[AndyD]

I am using Xara PGD10.
I'll have a toy with the suggestions later.
Thanks.

[gwpriester]

Acorn - I think what AndyD is asking is how to blur a portion of a photo while leaving the rest of the photo sharp. Will this script to that?

[Acorn]

Acorn - I think what AndyD is asking is how to blur a portion of a photo while leaving the rest of the photo sharp. Will this script to that?

Gary, I was only answering the blur part. Your overlay and transparency still would need to be applied.

Each of the methods has a different blur effect so I thought it would useful to list those I have used.

I hope others have other approaches as I am sure they are all equally useful.

The CSS3 blur can be applied to any shape, smart shape or text without forcing Xara to create an image; Photo blur is just for images.

It would be better to replace the "#blur" with ".blur" (changing an ID to a Class) and Naming any shape with htmlclass=blur.
CSS3 blur does have some browser version issues so do test first.

Examples of CSS3 filer are http://bennettfeely.com/filters/.

Acorn

P.S. CSS3 effects are for Web rendering so won't occur in PDF - I should have made that clear earlier!

[AndyD]

Yeah, I was more thinking of obscuring a small patch of an image. I am sure I used to be able to do it in psp years ago. Thanks for your feedback guys.