The Orton Effect
What is the Orton Effect?
The Orton Effect is a photography technique that gives your photos a softer, glowing, and, I would call it, dreamlike effect. It was developed by Canadian photographer Michael Orton, who originally created the effect by combining two slide photos of the same scene, one that was sharp and one that was out of focus on purpose, both with different exposures.
Nowadays, you can recreate everything digitally in Lightroom or Photoshop, and it is very popular in landscape, forest, flower, and nature photography. Essentially you just → soften some of the finer details, add a gentle glow around brighter areas, and make the transitions between light and shadow a little smoother.
The key, however, is that you do not want to just blurring the entire photo. You still want enough sharpness and structure underneath the softness so the result actually looks good and not just out of focus.
How to Do the Orton Effect
1. Start With the Right Photo
Technically speaking you can do the Orton Effect with almost anything, but some scenes definitely work better than others. What generally works well are:
Forests with sunlight coming through the trees
Flowers with soft backgrounds
Misty landscapes
Backlit leaves/trees/foliage
Waterfalls and streams
The effect works very well when you already have some bright areas in the photo, because that is where the glow becomes most noticeable.
Also, please make sure you start with a properly focused photo. You will be adding the softness later during editing, so there is absolutely no need to deliberately miss focus while shooting.
2. Get the Exposure Right
There are no special camera settings you need for the Orton Effect. A good starting point for landscapes would be → Aperture: f/8–f/11 → ISO: 100–400 → Shutter Speed: Whatever gives you a properly exposed photo.
One thing you want to watch out for is your highlights, especially when shooting sunlight coming through trees or bright flowers. If those highlights are entirely blown out, you will not magically get that detail back by applying the Orton Effect later.
And as usual, shoot in RAW if possible. It just gives you much more freedom when editing later.
Creating the Orton Effect in Photoshop
Photoshop is the easiest way to recreate the traditional Orton effect because you can work with the sharp and blurred parts separately.
1. Duplicate Your Photo
Open your photo in Photoshop and duplicate the background layer.
You should now have:
Your original, sharp photo underneath
A duplicate layer on top that you will use for the glow
2. Apply Gaussian Blur
Select the duplicate layer and go to:
Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur
Start with around 10–30 pixels, depending on the resolution of your photo.
You want the finer details to become softer, but you should still be able to recognise the main shapes. And do not worry too much about getting the exact blur amount right immediately. You can always adjust the strength later.
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