
Photoshop Elements 3 Down & Dirty Tricks12
Soft-Edged Portrait Background
This is a technique that I started showing in my live seminars as a 30-second portrait or product-shot background. Basically, it
adds a quick “burned in” effect around the edges of your image, and although the background looks pretty bland when com-
plete, as soon as you put an object or person on it, it instantly “makes sense.”
STEP ONE: Create a new document
in RGB mode by going under the File
menu, under New, and choosing Blank
File (I created a 4x6" document at 72
ppi). Click the Foreground color swatch
in the Toolbox, and when the Color
Picker appears, choose the color ...