Blurry vignette background in Photoshop

Published on August 20, 2023

Blur background (blurry vignette effect)

In this blog I will show you how to blur your background in Adobe Photoshop!

Rather watch the video with instructions? Then click here or scroll down to the end of this page.

Step 1: Make selection

Open the photo you want to edit. Then press CTRL+J to duplicate the background layer. Right click on the new layer and select ‘convert to smart object‘.

Select the elliptical marquee tool and make a round selection. Then navigate to ‘Select > Transform selection‘. You can now adjust the size, shape and position of the selection. Make sure the entire subject fits inside of the selection. Everything outside of this selection will be blurred.

When the selection has the right shape, navigate to ‘Select > Inverse‘. You have now selected the background, instead of the subject.

Step 2: Blurry vignette background

Navigate to ‘Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur‘. I use a radius of 15 pixels, but you can also use a different amount.

Now select the layer mask. Increase the feather to make the transition between the sharp and blurry area smoother.

If you want, you can adjust the amount of blur by double clicking on the ‘gaussian blur’ layer.

And that’s how you create a blurry vignette effect in Adobe Photoshop!

I now showed you how to create a blurry vignette effect, but you can also blur the entire background. If you want to know how to do that, you can read this blog.