How You Can Use Photoshop Elements to Blur a Background for a Fast Shallow Depth of Field Effect 

You're welcome! And check out my video just about layers ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uGzlRyKPL2c.html

You're welcome Joe! I really appreciate the support, expecially right now while I am in the middle of a move from California to Tennessee (cheaper to live here).

Glad you think so!

The halo effect is caused by blurring the background image. The image of the girl on the background is getting blurred along with the rest of that layer, and it is the blurred edge of the girl that you are seeing. The way around this is to use the clone stamp tool on the background layer and hide the outside edge of the girl on the background layer. In most cases I don't think this is an issue, but on darker backgrounds it may be more noticeable. Separate the girl out of the background first, then go back to the background and fix the edge of the girl, then blur that layer.

You're welcome 😊

Depends on what you mean by Rain Effect. There isn't any easy filter for that. It is something I could do but it is a very advanced project. Some things to consider. During rain things in the distance have lower contrast but do to the wetness things in the foreground have higher contrast and are shiny. There is the rain streaking effect caused by light hitting the falling raindrops, depends on the lighting and would need streaks of light added to the photo to properly show that. There will be puddles of water with reflections on the ground. I can think of several more things that would need to be done and for something this major I would probably use Adobe Photoshop instead of Photoshop Elements. If you are talking about just putting some streaks of rain on a photo that can be done with Blend Modes, but it wouldn't be too convincing.

@@HTGPhoto thank you for your reply.

Thanks! Adobe has made some amazing improvements with AI in their Adobe Photoshop program with things like Generative Fill but I haven't seen anything ground breaking being used in PSE yet. If they bring Generative Fill to PSE it would be great. Basically it is used like the Creative Fill. In Creative Fill it finds other parts of the image to fill in the areas you want fixed. With Generative Fill it creates new imagery to fill in those areas.

@@HTGGeorge Does Subject Detect work just as well on the newer versions?

Because most of my followers here on RU-vid have older versions of PSE that don't have subject select.

Subject Select is getting better at actually finding the subject, but the resulting selection still usually needs some fixing.

Thanks!