Digital Light & Color

The blur hand tool used on anything other than an absolutely featureless area seems to darken the area if I cross the area repeatedly. Because the amount of blurring that is generated by a single passage of the tool usually is much less than the amount of blurring I seek, the tool has much less utility than it would if the darkening phenomenon were absent. Does anyone else experience this problem?

I tried the Blur tool on a B&W gradient image and it indeed seems to always darken the the blurred areas when multiple brush strokes are applied.

Looks like it was a rounding problem. Now fixed for next maintenance release.

As a workaround until that becomes available, consider using 1:1 cloning.

1) Make a blurred copy of the image using the desired blurring radius.

2) Open the clone tool and use the Opt menu to select 1:1 cloning.

3) Adjust the radius, transparency etc. of the cloning brush

4) Click anywhere on the blurred image

5) Click and drag on the original image to copy parts of the blurred image over the original with the desired transparency. Using 1:1 cloning guarantees that the blurred and original clone locations are always identical.

This same technique works for any transformation that preserves the geometry of the image.