The Orton Effect is native to Elements 10, but earlier versions can achieve it too

Michael Orton is a fine-art and landscape photographer. He is also the creator of the “Orton Effect”. This finish is based around a process whereby a copy of an image is blurred and then combined with the original to produce a soft, dreamlike effect. It’s well-suited to portraits, but can be used to enhance many other subjects for which you want an ethereal, romanticized look.

It can be recreated digitally, with the advantage that you have much more control over the blur and the brightness of the finished image. It’s also one of the new Guided Edit effects in Elements 10.

BEFORE: Certain images are extremely receptive to the Orton Effect.

AFTER: Applying the effect lends a neat and ethereal luster to the photo.

The Guided Edit mode is designed to walk you through sophisticated image-enhancement techniques in an easy-to-understand way. But what it produces, in this case, is a layered image that you can ‘deconstruct’ to find out how the effect has been achieved.

The principle of the Orton Effect is simple enough to be replicated without this Guided Edit mode. But since the results it produces are quite good, it’s worthwhile trying to mirror it. It uses layers, blend modes, the Gaussian Blur and Add Noise filters, so it’s something you can do in any version of Photoshop or Elements. The main difficulty is maintaining the brightness of the original image, since the blur effect comes from using the Multiply mode, which has a strong darkening effect. One way of doing this would be to add an adjustment layer at the end of the process. But the Guided Edit version of this effect adds a “brightening” layer below the blur layer, and also brightens the blur layer itself, so this is the process we’ve used in the walkthrough.

Once you see how it works, though, you’ll soon figure out how to adapt it to your own needs.

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Recreate the Orton Effect Manually

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  Guided Edit Version

  In Guided Edit mode, the Orton Effect has three sliders, controlling blur, noise and brightness. The method does tend to make images darker and more contrast-heavy, so the brightness adjustment is valuable. When you’re happy, click Done.

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  How it’s Done

  Swap back to the Full Edit mode and you’ll see that Elements has created two additional layers that generate this Orton Effect. The top one does most of the work, applying blur and noise, while the lower ‘focus’ layer is a brighter version of the original image.

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  Duplicate Layer

  Study these two layers, and you’ll see how to do this manually, without the need for Elements 10’s Guided Edit. First, you need to make two duplicates of the original layer: drag its thumbnail onto the new layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette. Do it twice.

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  The "Brightness" Layer

  Now select the first duplicate layer (we’ll call it "Brightness"), use the Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Brightness/Contrast command, and increase the Brightness to 70. This produces the same brightening effect as the "Focus" layer created by the Guided Edit version.

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  The "Blur" Layer

  Select the top layer, which we’ll call "Blur", and set the blend mode to Multiply. In this mode, the layer darkens the pixels in the layer(s) below. This produces the blurring and noise effect, which the Orton Effect is based around. But our image still looks a little dark.

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  Brightness Tweaks

  To fix that, apply the same Brightness/Contrast adjustment as for the layer underneath (Brightness set to 70%). This comes closest to the default adjustment applied by the Orton Effect Guided Edit. You could make it darker or lighter if the image needs it.

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  Add the Blur

  Now apply a Gaussian Blur to the top "Blur" layer. Because it’s set to Multiply mode, this has the effect of "spreading" the darker tones into surrounding areas, without covering up existing detail. This is the basis of the Orton Effect. A value of 20 pixels is about right.

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  Add Noise

  Adding noise is optional, but it does add a neat ethereal look. This can be applied directly to the top "Blur" layer, using the Add Noise filter. A value of around 20% looks attractive here – make sure you check the Monochromatic box to avoid generating colored pixels.

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  Quick Tip

  The grain produced by the Add Noise filter is hard-edged and pixelated, and looks "digital". But if you apply a slight Gaussian Blur (0.5 pixels should do it), the grain will become softer and more film-like. It won’t affect the definition because it’s being applied to the "Blur" layer, not the image layer itself.

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