Can this be done?

[tasmo2]

This photo is of my son scoring the winning run at his t-ball game, it was our first win. I was trying to watch and still get a picture (lesson learned) and ended up getting a crappy picture. Can any thing be done to fix it? I was trying to blur the background and sharpen my son and his coach in PSE and it I couldn't get it to look right because of the blurriness of the entire photo. Can it be done or do I just have to suck it up and not have a pic of it? Thanks guys!

[SusanH1970]

Whoops, no picture!

[zona5101]

The one you linked to is a great little candid capture. I like the motion blur even if it wasn't planned.

[tasmo2]

Sorry! the baby was fussing and I totally forgot to add the pic! LOL!

[edbayani]

i know you cannot reshoot this once in a lifetime shot, so is this how you wanted it done?

[tasmo2]

YES! Except I dont like the ump in the pic, I was hoping to blur him as well because he had a goofy look on his face. LOL!

Can you tell me how you did this? I played with it for a long time, but I guess I just don't know how.

Thank you so much!

[edbayani]

with the lasso tool i roughly selected your son, the coach and umpire and pressed ctrl./J to copy it to another layer above the original background. then made the bg layer invisible by clicking on the 'eye' on the left. then i went o the layer your son and clicked on the layermask icon at the bottom of the layers pallette. using the brush, i brushed away the remaining images around the figures. then made the bg layer visible again. i pressed ctrl/A to select the bg layer and then pressed Q to enter quickmask. i applied a white to black gradient to erase gradually the bottom part to the top. then pressed Q again to exit quick mask and applied gaussian blur on the gradient selection rendering the top blurred while the bottom remained sharp. after flattening, fine tune with the clone tool.

[edbayani]

here's another one

[tasmo2]

Thanks for the info! I will have to play with it when i get some more time, now that I have directions I can follow! I actually liked the coach in there, because he was showing so much emotion, but that umpire.. LOL poor kid, he just looks funny. I appreciate all your help!!