How to blur a part of text in Photoshop

Lets learn a neat little trick, and make a part of a random text look like it's out of focus.

Open a new Photoshop document.

Choose the Horizontal Type Tool.

Enter some text.

Press Commit button to confirm the text you just typed.

Create a new layer.

Choose the Brush Tool.

Set the according brush size and set Hardness to 0%.

Press D to select the black foreground color.

And click the text area you want it to be IN focus.

The rest is going to be blurred out.

Hold Ctrl and click the new layer's thumbnail (see picture).

Deactivate the new layers visibility and choose the text layer (see picture).

Click the little eye icon next to the new layer to deactivate layer visibility.

In the menu click Select and choose Inverse.

In the menu click Filter, Blur and choose Gaussian Blur.

Click OK.

Set the blur Radius to about 3.2 pixels and click OK.

And you are done!

Click here for the Gimp version of this tutorial.