The Orton Effect - How to Ortonize Your Images

The Orton Effect comes from a technique first used by Michael Orton in which one "normal" photograph or slide was sandwiched with another out of focus and overexposed photograph or slide. The dreamlike quality of the resulting imagery has become very popular. Michael Orton outlined the basics of this creative process in his book, "Photographing Creative Landscapes". In today's digital world, the process of creating Orton Effect images has become even simpler using digital darkroom software. In addition to creative uses, the Orton Technique is also very useful in "saving" images that wound up accidentally out of focus. For this tutorial I am using PhotoShop Elements version 6 for Mac. The process is the same for almost all digital darkroom software although some of the menu options may be named differently.