Digital Picture Editing
 

I am new to editing photo's take with a camera. I want to edit some Wedding pictures. I wanted to make the background out of focus (blured) but keeping the Happy Couple pin sharp.

I have PSP7 & Adobe Photoshop 7.

These have a Blur (but ALL image). Any ideas on a tool or program to do this effect?

Or a GOOD guilde online. I looked at google.co.uk & found nothing helpful.

Cheers

Re: Digital Picture Editing
 

According to my copy of Photoshop Elements 2, to blur the background you proceed as follows.

1) Open an image and select the main subject. The example given uses the Magnetic Lassoo tool.

2) Invert the selection so that everything except the main subject is selected by choosing Select | Inverse.

3) Choose the Blur filter (Filter | Blur). The best control is with Gaussian blur or Smart blur. The example given used Gaussian blur.

4) Set the radius for the Gaussian blur (the example used 16.0 pixels) and click OK to to blur the background, leaving only the subject in sharp focus.

Re: Digital Picture Editing
 

Thanks..

Any simpler way?

As I have to Zoom in to Lassoo. & I cant select the WHOLE object. I move off to zoom out & it selects where I move to.

Re: Digital Picture Editing
 

I've just been doing this very thing. In Photoshop, if you double click when magnetic lassoiong, the tool stops at that point and then you can scroll as normal. Move the cursor back to the picture and click to a nearby part you are lassooing and the line carries on. I had the setting on "add to.." on the little box things above the top left of the photo.
Sorry it's not a good description but my comp is rendering a video so I can't really double check the above at the moment.

Re: Digital Picture Editing
 

There's a filter called Andromeda Varifocus for Photoshop which does what you want