Dreamy background effects

Can anyone suggest an alternative to Gausian Blur for throwing backgrounds out of focus. I have a wedding shot of the bride looking back over her shoulder but the background is cluttered and has a few "unwanted" guests in it. Cloning the guests out isn't really an option, I dont want to replace the background either.

Gausian Blur just doesn't seem to have the desired effect, and I would prefer to give it a "dreamy" feel.

Can we see the image so we can see the problem?

If you have CS2/CS3, you can try their Lens Blur filter. It can simulate proper lens blur, or that is the theory. In some ways it does a better job than guassian blur. In some ways it may not be worth the effort.

Maybe not "dreamy", but might allow a better look than the "flat fog" that guassian blur tends to give.

That might be a good idea John

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The most annoying thing here is the two most prominent guest are my son and daughter, I could have just yelled for them to lose themselves.

I am actually considering going back to the venue and snapping the exterior again.

I'm using Photoshop 7

This is a very quick attempt, but how about:

Sorry John, nice try but I dont want to lose the dress

Then I think you're down to cloning out the background people. It can be done. Unfortunately putting a feather on what I did doesn't remove them enough.

Not sure you can do much to recover without re-shooting the area and blending out the background, but perhaps you can salvage it in other ways.

How about something in another direction...
Instead of removing the background, use it as an area to place another image. Perhaps a closeup of the bride's face in the upper right, or fade in a page from the invitation, etc... along the whole right side?

VERY roughly:

look up "Ethereal Glow" effects.
combined with gausian blur you should be able to quickly make her the center of attention.

Is this what you have in mind? I know its crude but knocked it up in 3 minutes.


Ken

That would be ideal Ken, thanks.

I've already had a go at cloning out the unwanted figures but the results are a bit rough, your technique should just about finish it off and hide the dodgy cloning......what do I do?

Have a look here for some tips http://www.ephotozine.com/learn/techniques/p-5




Mick

Easy peasy really... firstly I straightened the pic up and cropped it a bit to get rid of other distractions, then created a copy layer and applied some gaussian blur to that. I then used the eraser tool at 100% to rub a hole in the blurred layer over the bride. Use a fine tool on the edges, then you can whack away at the centre with a bigger one. You now have a a very odd picture with the bride floating over the bg! set the eraser to, say 75% and start rubbing out the blurred layer from the bottom reducing the eraser as you go maybe finishing up at 50%. I suspect there will be away of doing this using a graduated layer - someone will know

Best of luck

Ken

Ken;

I already tried Gausian Blur and it didnt give me the effect you have, what version of photoshop did you use?

I'm using photoshop 7 and all GB does for me is "fog" the background

Its me again

I just tried applying GB to the whole image and its way different to what I had before:::

Maybe the way I applied the mask affected the way GB worked, going to try it Kens way and see what the finished result is like.

Watch this space