Guide to Pixelating Your Pictures with Photoshop

I've worked with Photoshop and its effects on a regular basis for over eight years, quickly becoming the "go-to" expert for friends and family with photo retouching, enhancement, or other graphics needs. Over the years I've used a great deal of different Photoshop effects for different purposes, and have found ways to make utilizing the effects easier and more enjoyable for both the average and the advanced Photoshop user.

Sometimes you just want to focus on a single, fixed point or object in your photo. In a previous article I discussed how to do that by blurring the rest of the photo, but you may instead want an effect that pixelates the photo rather than just blurring it. (One person in particular wanted a photo doctored in this manner for a special effects project he was working on.) If you're curious how this is achieved, read on.

(Disclaimer: I've had people ask me complex questions about getting into the professional photography business. While I have friends in the profession and know that Photoshop is a necessary tool for the modern photographer, I'm not in the business, so I can't answer related questions; I just have a knack for retouching the photos of friends and family and am familiar with the workings of the program.)

Pick a photo you want to use for the effect. Ideally it will have a mostly solid color background, like grass or the sky. Copy the layer that has your focal point or object on it; to do this, drag it to the "new layer" button on your "Layers" palette (the button that looks like paper folded over.) Look to make sure you have three layers for the photo before continuing-you should have one single layer for the background, and two of your focal point. Remember, when using special effects on photos, layers are what ensure your job goes more smoothly.

Click on Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur. Keep adding pixels until you're happy with the result. I've learned everyone has their own idea of what "enough" is, so just keep experimenting until you think it's "enough". What you have at the moment is a blurred photo, so if that's the look you were aiming for, you can wrap it up. But if you want to pixelate it, there are a couple of things left to do.

Click on Filter/Pointilize/Mosaic. Drag the slidebar to set the size to something you're comfortable with; again, this isn't an exact science. I recommend 3, but in the end this step won't dramatically and irrevocably change your picture so feel free to adjust it however you want.

Does your photo look worse than you expected? Don't worry, it's actually supposed to at this point. Click the "Add Layer Mask" button on your layers palette. Choose the "Gradient" tool on your toolbar. (It seems to work well with the radial gradient, but you can use whatever you'd like.) On the other hand, you can also use the soft paintbrush-making sure you're using either black or gray pixels-and paint the area you want to focus on. Don't be upset if you don't get it right your first time; as I said, that's what the layers are for. You can always redo it until you're happy with the results.