Photoshop Elements 10 Depth of Field Effect

I tried out Photoshop Elements 10's depth of field effect on the shot above.  It's a big improvement over the original shot:

The original shot.  What's with the evil eye, lady?

This is one effect that I can't pull off in Lightroom.  To create the appearance of a shallow depth of field with PSE 10, I used the guided mode to walk me through the steps.  First, I used a selection brush to identify the subject.  Next I clicked on the button "add blur."  Finally I dragged a lever to determine the intensity of the effect.  It's a pretty simple process, although a similar result can probably be achieved using a gaussian blur with a layer mask.