Creating Soft Lens Effect
Soft Lens filters are used widely in fashion and modelling photography. In the other hand, adding and removing filter to shoot different kind of objects is yet to be bored, especially for those who has many lenses and frequently does candid or traveling photography.
So why don’t try to simulate soft lens effect with Photoshop?
While this tutorial is intended for amateur photographer, a great attention of detail could make your result looks like a pro.
Original
Step 1: Soften
Before we messed up the original photo, let Duplicate your original layer by dragging it to a New Layer button which located on the bottom of your Layers window. So you’ll have a layer named ‘Background copy’.
Then, Desaturate it by pressing cmd+shift+U (Mac) or ctrl+shift+U (PC). This bullet-proof action will flatten Histogram value to allows you spreading the blur effect we’ll adding on the next step.
Pour some Gaussian Blur on it. Usually I use 6 or 10 pixels radius on a 300 dpi photo which is relative with photo’s resolution.
Last, punch the Layer’s blending mode to Soft Light. Don’t forget to adjust its opacity wisely while the best result will appear on 30 - 60 percent. Abuse this value would create a prying eyes effect. Be careful 
Well, you can finish your work right now.
But if you want to enrich the level depth, let smack the next step.
Step 2: Manage Level Depth
Forget rubbing your mouse with never ending burning and dodging tasks. We will make a *zap* with Photoshop’s less-famous High Pass filter.
Merge the ‘Background copy’ and ‘Background’ layer by pressing cmd+shift+E (Mac) or ctrl+shift+E (PC), then Duplicate it.
Tell your mouse to find High Pass feature on Filter > Other menu and drag it around 70 - 80 pixels radius. You’ll notice some magic things happen.
Next, make it perfect by changing the blending mode of your magic layer to Soft Light again and decrease its opacity to 30 - 50 percent. This will burn the magic layer softly.
Yoohoo! You did it!
Try to compare this final result with the previous step’s.
Always remember, try to avoid overuse Photoshop effects unless you are doing Digital Imaging thing because less means more.
