THE CREATIVE PROCESS
"Padme Amidala"
Basement24.com - The Creative Process - Padme Amidala
STEP 7

I then use the gaussian blur to make the
background fade away from Padme.  It brings
more focus to her, but doesn't make it seem
that she's standing on a blank canvas.

I normally don't have the black border,
watermark and signature on my image while
working on it, but I add those when the image is
complete, and it's at the pixel size I want to post
the image at.