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On the other hand, I have blur filter "Nik's Classical Blur" that I have had a hard time trying to replicate manually. Obviously, if it is a plugin, it is just firing off parameters that you could set manually if you only new how.
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Yes, I like that one also. But I use the NIK Color eFex Pro 2.0 and they have renamed it to Classcial Soft Focus and added several additional controls. You can now really do some wonderful things with it that would otherwise take many steps in Photoshop.
Here is an example of the classical soft focus:
Cheers,
rfs