blur out background

[Anne12343]

Hi, I don't like how I shot this background with the bricks showing. Should have used a better F-stop. That being said, I do have Lightroom, Topaz Lens Effects and Elements 7. Any user-friendly links to blur out those bricks...tutorials? I find Lens Effects is a bit hard to do. Thanks. You all are great!

[Tito87]

You didn't say what f/stop you used. You can use a wider aperture, and place the baby farther away from the background. That should help you some. If you want to go the PP way about it, you could try the Lens Blur Filter in PS.
Select the bricks, click on Select and click on Save Selection. Deselect the bricks. Click on filter>Blur>Lens Blur. A dialogue box will open. Choose Alpha Channel in the Source box, and play with the Radius slider until you see something you like. Having said all that, it's better to do it while you're actually taking the shot.

[JFSanders]

Sorry Anne, the little one's hair is going to make any chance of blurring out or changing the background very frustrating to impossible without massive amounts of pixel level work. Time for a reshoot. Also, putting pink outfit on a pink background make the subject diminish into the background.

[cyber3d]

Anne12343, I took the opportunity to try an edit in Photoshop. I tried a few different techniques. The process I like the best took about 10 minutes. I hope you don't mind.

I don't use Lightroom much anymore so I can't help there. My example was done using masks with the refine function, creating adjustment layers with hue/saturation, curves, and levels. Very little touch up was done maybe a little on the top of the head and upper arms.



>>click on image for a larger view<<

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[vsa]

Just by googling "blurry background mask tutorial" should get you started with the basics. I'm not familiar with Elements so not sure what features it has, but my guess the version 7 doesn't have the best selection tools that Photoshop CS5 has. In that case the hairs would be a huge problem. In CS5 it's not.

Here's what I came up with in a short while.


If you use the blur technique straight to the photo you'll end up with some halos from the baby (baby blending to the background) and on the edges (transparent blending to background) even after the masking. You see this very often when beginners start to experiment with motion blur etc. You need to clone more areas around the image and in this case first mask out the baby and on a layer beneath clone some more tiles behind the baby. Here's an example of the haloing (original, bad way, good way):


It might be a bit hard to see and in this case you might get away with it as the background is close to the color of the subject.

...do my ramblings make any sense? :D

[JFSanders]

Very nicely done VSA.

Jim

[_Nik]

I think it can be a good idea to use a gradient mask to bring out the blur gradually.
The hair in this was a bit difficult to do.

dsc_6507_0001-(Large)2.jpg


@VSA I like what you did.

[Anne12343]

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your advice. Will try your techniques.

[vsa]

Originally Posted by _Nik

@VSA I like what you did.

It's all in the "refine edge..." and "refine radius tool".

[edbayani]

Here's another edit