Firstly, I'm not an expert with Photoshop, I'm just your garden variety photographic hacker. But I do manage to do some work with it.
There are a variety of masking tools. I use the different lasso tools to make an initial selection, then sometimes I use the Quick Mask, and the paintbrush tool to fine tune the selection.
I learned this the same way I learned all my computer stuff. I find out how to pull up the Help menu, and go from there. The trick is knowing what the particular feature you want to use is called. "Selection" is fairly straightforward, but it took me awhile to grasp "Mask." The same is true for "Unsharp Mask." (I wanted to make it sharper, not UNsharper.) After some 8 years or so using PS, I've managed to learn enough to produce my own photographs, print, and frame them.
There's no substitute for working at it until you can do what you want. My advice is to pull up the HELP menu, and wade right in.
In your case, I would select the foreground elements I want to keep sharp, using the lasso tools, then perhaps use Quick Mask to fine tune the selection. Then I would invert the selection, which should now incorporate the background elements you want to blur. Then I would play with the Blur filter under the Filter menu to try to reproduce an effect that looked like out-of-focus image area. If you don't overdo it, you can probably produce an effect very close to what you want.
If possible, I would reshoot it, but if that is not a possibility, I would Photoshop it.
__________________ Dennis
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Last edited by Dennis_Vied; 10-03-2008 at 12:46 PM.
Linear Mode
