Diffuse Glow in PSCS

[andyapc]

I have a picture on my layout in which I went under Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation - clicked on Colorize and adjusted the controls so I have a somewhat antiquey looking b/w photo.

I want to apply a diffuse glow to it. I went under Filters>Distort>Diffuse Glow, but my picture had red all over it. After awhile, I realized that my toolbox was showing a red background color from when I was working on a tutorial yesterday. I started with a transparent background for this layout. I made sure my picture layer was active and fooled around with the background colors until I ultimately changed it to white.

Does the background color on a particular layer always have to be white when I want to apply Diffuse Glow to that layer?

[Meryl]

What effect are you trying to achieve with your photo? more antique looking?

I've never used diffuse glow so looked it up in my trusty "Photoshop Bible" by Deke McClelland (wonderful book!) - he says its the effct he mostly ignors - if he does I'm happy to, too :) - he says "it sprays a coat of dithered, background-coloured pixels onto your image" - so yes you are right it takes the colour that you have set as your background.
The picture i tried it on is now not a pretty sight!

[Emma]

Use white or pale yellow as the background color when using Diffuse Glow. I absolutely LOVE this filter and have a heavy hand with it, especially for montage...
you'll love it, gives things such a nice, dreamy glow
I also like the Noise>Median filter to blur things while keeping the edges sharp. Makes a dreamy look without being out-of-focus fuzzy.

[Meryl]

Emma - just shows ;0) off to give it a try...........

[Emma]

Emma - just shows ;0) offSorry, I"m a show off and a loud mouth to boot ;)

This reminds me when I was in high school, and in math class doing lines and slopes, and I was in lala land and flunking, and the teacher always saying, "m is the slope of the line..." and I always thought she was saying, "Emma's the slow person" until I heard "f the line" and realized I wasn't paying attention, again