vbiegler Posted March 19, 2008 Share Posted March 19, 2008 I am new to photo editing so I need some help. I can't seem to figure out how to blur the background of a picture without also bluring the focal subject. Can someone tell me how to do this? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Power Posted March 19, 2008 Share Posted March 19, 2008 Just select the area you want to blur with the lasso tool, if you have selected an area you can add another area by holding ctrl. The blur effect will only work in the selected area. Quote - My Gallery | My Deviant - Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjmcguinness Posted March 20, 2008 Share Posted March 20, 2008 What you need to do is cut out the main focal object from the picture and place it on a separate layer. Take a look in the Tutorials section for 'Cutting out images, the easy way". This will show you how to cleanly select out an area you want to keep sharp. Method would be, start with the image you want to manipulate and duplicate it [CTRL+SHIFT+D], so the same image is repeated on both layers. Cut out the focal image on the top layer (basically, remove the background - using the technique in the aforementioned tutorial). Now you can blur the bottom layer (unfocus, motion, gaussian, it's your choice - depending on what effect you are going for). Finally, once you have completed the blur on the bottom you can merge the top and bottom layers so you can save finished image as .PNG or .JPG or .BMP - whatever is your preferred image format. Hope this helps. -CJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willgoss Posted March 20, 2008 Share Posted March 20, 2008 Or the easy way..... Duplicate the later.....then Blur the bottom Layer....then Erase the portions of the top layer allowing the blurred section to show through... Along the same line you can convert the blurred layer to B&W to further enhance the effect... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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