Is there something like a blur paint brush?

[hippiechos]

I like the effect of Gaussian blur. I was wondering if there's something that I don't know about that can create a Gaussian blur effect, but allow me to control where it's applied like you do with the paint brush. I've tried moving the hardness of the eraser tool down to 0% and running along the edges to create the blur, but it's still not soft enough for what I'm looking for, unless I make the brush size huge and then it overlaps areas I don't want to erase. I can work around this by cutting things from one later and putting them on another so that I can create the blur, and then merge them back down, but I was hoping there might be an easier way.

 

Thanks for any suggestions!

[Eli]

Yes, you can use @AnthonyScoffler Brush Factory. You can create your own brushes and use them in your images. I love it!

[hippiechos]

Thanks for the suggestion, @Eli. While poking around the tool, I couldn't see how to build a brush that just applies a blur. I saw how I could apply a colored, stylized brush, but I'm not sure about something that blurs instead of applying color. Would you be able to point me in the direction of accomplishing just the blur brush?

[Red ochre]

Perhaps try TR's Dodge & Burn (and blur)

[Woodsy]

Would Pyrochild's Smudge tool work?

[hippiechos]

@Red ochre - Thanks! It looks like that will do the job for me. 

 

@Woodsy - Thanks for the suggestion. I had tried the smudge tool, but it pushed the pixels around rather than spread and thin them like I'm looking for. 

[Eli]

I misunderstood your request. I thought you wanted to paint with a blurred brush. That is why I propossed Brush Factory.

I agree Tr's Dodge and burn can help you blurring detail on an image.

[hippiechos]

@Eli - It's all good. It introduced me to a new tool, one that looks pretty awesome and I'll be using in future projects.

[NinthDesertDude]

Funny story; I was planning to make a filter brush plugin like TR did, but I didn't have the time to make the resources to do it until TR made that very plugin. That's why I made brush factory for brush dynamics and not for applying a filter.

Of course, TR covered only the basics (colors and adjustments) while I'd be covering filters. What I need in that regard is a way to read all filters and apply them to a surface so I can copy over from that surface (it'd be like a clone stamp, but with the anchor point in the same coordinates on a separate image). Well, there's an idea if somebody gets bored

 

A year later I did make an extension of it.

 

 

Edited July 18, 2018 by Joshua Lamusga

[jamkan]

It can be done without a specific blurring brush.

1. Create a duplicate image and add it to the second layer. 

2. Blur the first image using things like Gaussian Blur.
3. Use the eraser with suitable size and hardness to erase the unblurred top layer image.
The erased areas will appear blurred.