This tutorial will teach you to create nice glow effect that adds ‘dreamy’ look to your images. You may use this technique both for color and B/W images.
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Duplicate the background. Press CTRL-J to make copy of the ‘Background’ layer. Rename new layer to ‘glow – temp’. This layer will be used as temporary layer to create glow effect. It will be deleted later. |
 Gaussian Blur settings. |
Blur ‘glow-temp’ layer.Select Filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur and set Radius value to 30-40 pixels for larger images and 10-20 for smaller images. Larger radius means stronger blur effect. |
 ‘Levels’ settings. |
Use ‘Levels’ to lighten the image.Press CTRL-L to adjust levels. Increase ‘gamma’ setting. You may also move white slider to the left to get more highlights (this will increase ‘dreamy’ effect). |
 Click to see image with selection. |
Select highlighted areas of the image. It’s a bit ‘tricky’ part. Go to the Channels palette and click ‘Load channel as selection’. This creates a selection that contains mostly highlighted ares of your image. Darker areas will be affected by selection less. |
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Duplicate ‘glow-temp’ layer. Go back to Layers palette. Press CTRL-J to duplicate ‘temp’ layer. Only selected areas will be copied to the new layer.Rename new layer to ‘Glow’. Set it’s blending mode to Lighten. |
 Mask for the ‘Makeup’ layer.  Click to see ‘before’ and ‘after’ |