This is the picture I started with. It has a lot of sharpness in it, I just figured I’d try to use the effect to see how it turned out. I use photoshop to make this effect, but there are other programs that can do the same. Now there are three layers in this picture. One original layer, one sharp layer and one blurry layer. That means you have to duplicate the the original layer two times.

As you can see in this picture you see the three layers of the original picture as well as two levels layers. To get these layers go to the layer menu -> adjustment layers -> layers.

Then you get this window up, drag the arrow in the middle to the left until you reach 2.0 like you see in the picture. Then duplicate it and arrange it like seen below.

Now the picture looks really bright, so to make it look good again you have to group the three top layers (select them and press +g or ctrl+g if you use windows). Then add the multiply effect on the group.

Now you are ready to blurrrrrr! A tutorial I saw online said that it was a good idea to use gaussian blur. Before you do, make sure you have selected only the blurry layer. To blur go to the filter menu -> blur -> gaussian blur…

Enter 20 pixel as the radius and press okey. Now you’re done with the orton picture, but if you want you can make it sharper in certain areas. To do that you select the blurry layer again and create a mask. Layer menu -> layer mask -> reveal all. A layer mask is a black and white representation of what you want to be shown and not shown in the picture.

This is how it will look when you are done with sorting out all the layers and masks. The point of the mask is to draw black where you want the sharpness to come forward. I have learned that using the brush with about 30% opacity is the best way to draw in the sharpness. When I was done with this picture the mask looked like this. So that is how I made this picture. It looks a bit hard to do, but when you get into it it’s really easy! Good luck!