best way to blur a background?

[Jeni]

i have a picture of a bird, however it was in a cage so in the background i have ugly wire and the wooden frame. whats the best way of sorting it out? do i remove it and replace with something else or do i blur it out of existence???

[bryan]

thats a hard 1 jeni and without seeing the picture, i can only say, youll know best:bum: he he

personally i dont like replacing, as can often look fake, so id maybe go with bluring, or darkening it down.

[Jeni]

thanks Bryan, i dont like replacing them either but this bird is gorgeous and the background really spoils it. :(

[Hicarrumba]

Copy the layer and Gaussian blur with a mask, use the brush tool on various opacity to get the desired effect, which is the hardest part

[Jeni]

That is what I was doing John, I just haven't been able to get it right yet. I'm going to go back to it with fresh eyes in the morning I think.

[Hicarrumba]

Yeah it takes some doing

[Jeni]

http://www.tog247.com/gallery/data/500/thumbs/DSC_7574.jpg ('http://www.tog247.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=5750')

heres the pic, tips greatly welcomed!!!

[benjiblanco]

The way i would tackle it Jeni...

Duplicate the pic.

Using clone tool or similar, clone out the bird, this can be a roughish job.

you should then have a pic of just the background.

apply a guassian blur to this layer.

Then put the sharp layer on top, and mask out the bg revealing the blur.

If you dont clone out the bird on the blurred layer, you will get a halo around the sharp bird, hence this step, because the blur, blurs the bird outside of the 'bird area' making that effect.

ps, you dont need to clone out the entire bird. just about 'an inch' off the edges of the bird. depends how much blur you use.

[benjiblanco]

heres the stages, albeit very quickly done in 30 secs, you need to spend longer selecting the bird and the branch than i have just done lol :D

[Jeni]

cheers Ben, ill have a go later :)