Smart Blur – along with Bilateral Blur, which we discussed back in January – was originally created to help blur out flaws in an image (such as dust, grain, skin flaws, etc.) while maintaining detail in transitions such as the outline of the image or features in it. It’s a powerful tool that includes the ability to show you where it found the edges it’s planning on preserving, helping you fine-tune the effect that much faster:

However, blurs have tons of creative uses as well, and Smart Blur is no exception. In this second movie, we show you a number of different possibilities to have Smart Blur stylize your images, ending with an example of Chris using it to create fine art:

These movies previously appeared in our Insight Into Effects course on Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning. They’ve retired that course from their library, so we’re making them available publicly for free.