How To Blur The Background Of A Photo

Welcome, class. Today I'm going to teach you how to blur the background of your photograph. This makes the subject of the photo more noticeable and reduces distractions.

I'm going to use Artweaver, but you should be able to transfer the knowledge to most popular photo editing software.

Just like in the last tutorial, we're going to start off by duplicating the photo.

Click on the BOTTOM photo. Make sure you're on the bottom. Now select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

Slide the bar all the way to the right. Now we're going back to the top image. Click on it.

You can use the lasso tool to select as much area on the top layer as possible. Then press you delete key to clear the selection.

Once you've cleared the majority of the background, switch to the eraser tool. Erase gently around the edges.

When you're finished you're photo should have an effect similar to this. Save as...and choose a name for your new masterpiece.

How To Make Your Photo Partially Black And White

Making your photo in black and white with one or a few objects in colour is easier than you might think. I'm going to do it in Artweaver. It would probably be relatively simple to transfer these basic steps to other photo editing programs.

 First, you'll want to open your picture. Click on file > Open... > Then select the picture you want for this project.

Next you'll want to duplicate the photo so that you have the same photo on two separate layers.

Click on the bottom image to make sure that it is the image you are manipulating. Go to Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and slide the contrast bar all the way to the right. This will make your colour look brighter.

Now we're going to click on the top image.

Click adjustments > Grayscale...

Move the red to the right for a brighter black and white picture. Now we're finished editing the colours.

Taking your eraser tool, erase the "object" until the colour shows through completely.

And you're done!

Introduction Post

Hi, I'm Teddy. 

I love doing photo editing. 

While I don't have photoshop, I have found plenty of resources to edit my photos. 

Here I am going to share with you some of the easy and fun tricks I do to make my photos look really cool.

I use a combination of the following programs.

Artweaver - A simple photo editing program that once learned offers a large variety of tools for photo manipulation.

TwistedBrush Studio - This program is often used for painting, but also has a lot of great features for special effects.

Google Picasa - This is often thought of as being for novices, but it can do a lot more than you might think.

Sometimes I use other programs. Any time I do a post I'll mention the program I'm using.