Let’s face it! There may be times when we really, really want to scrap a situation or event but our photos are less than stellar. Over exposed, under exposed, slightly blurry, poor composition, or damaged photos.  All of these can lead to disappointment!  Here is just one way to salvage the situation! I love this photo of my granddaughter, Emily.   I love the look of concentration on her face, but the photo is slightly blurry. When I downsized the photo, it made the blur less obvious. I could have used it in the smaller size on a page utilizing white space, but that is not the look I wanted. Instead I chose to make the photo larger.  Yes – making it larger just made it worse! But that’s okay for my purposes!  Here it is upsized: I am going to allow the texture of my background paper(s) to camouflage this poor quality photo. First I dragged the photo onto my layout. Next I lowered the opacity of the photo to 61%.  I scrolled through the Blending Modes to see if any particular blend looked better than another.  I liked the look that the Overlay blend gave, so I chose that.  These will not be the exact settings that work best for every photo, but the process is the same.  Just play around until you like the look that you get. I have 2 background papers under this photo:  the bottom layer is a textured cardstock and the top layer is a heavily textured paper with embossed foliage on it.  I like the look the textured cardstock gave the photo, so I left that blending mode at Normal.    I thought the embossing on the top paper was too heavy, so I lowered the opacity to 81%.   I noticed that a heavily embossed branch was running right thru Emily’s face.  I took a soft edged brush and lowered the brush opacity to 26%. Being sure that I had the embossed foliage paper selected, I gently erased that paper away from Emily’s face. And here is the final result! I’m happy with that, so I just Save and I’m done! Whether you are a Photoshop or Photoshop Elements user, I hope you will find this tutorial helpful to rescue any precious photos that are less-than-perfect! Credits: Thanks to Michelle Bradshaw for sharing her original tutorial with me, and to Norma Keevers for allowing me modify her layout according to my needs.