Understanding Smart Blur

We took a look at Smart Blur earlier as it exists in the Underpainting palette,…but in Painter 12 they've actually brought this out as its own filter outside of Underpainting.…And I just want to explain a little bit more in depth exactly what it's useful for.…And it's really a simple filter, you'll find it under Focus, it's right here at…the top, Smart Blur, and we can kind of move this out of the way as we work.…

What it does is it basically looks at and analyzes an image, finds edges, or…areas of high contrast and protects them.…And then areas that are not high contrast, it softens.…So an ideal area of high contrast would be this flower up against these darker…elements. And an area of low contrast would be like in here, except for where…this frog happens to be I guess.…There's not much change going on in here.…So, that area doesn't have a lot of dramatic change in it, and so Smart Blur…will affect those areas much more than it's going to areas that have high…contrast boundaries associated with them.…