in this video I'll show you an easy way to blur the background in a photo I'll be using Adobe
Photoshop 2023 for this but you can do the same with any version which has the select
subject feature I'll start by duplicating the image layer which I'm going to use to
isolate the man to duplicate the layer right click and select the duplicate option in the
menu alternatively you can press Cmd + J on your Mac keyboard or Ctrl + J on a Windows PC
next go to the select menu and choose the subject option Photoshop then identifies and selects the
main subject in the photo which in this image is the man you can now see the marching ant showing
around the selection this is a good starting point but there are some problems around the
edges which I'll show you how to fix in a minute the other thing to mention about this selection
is that I really want to include the parcel in the foreground if I blur that anymore it's going
to look out of place to add the parcel to this selection and I'll use the quick selection tool
found in the tools palette because I'm adding to an existing selection I need to make sure that
I use the add to selection icon in the toolbar now I can paint over the parcel by clicking and
dragging with my mouse as I do this the selection snaps into place around the parcel and I can then
release the mouse button my next step is to convert the selection into a mask attached to
this top layer this is how we isolate the man on the layer so that he isn't affected when we blur
the background to add the mask to the layer click the add layer mask icon at the bottom
of the layers window this converts the active selection into a mask and the matching answer
removed if I hide the background layer we now see a checkered pattern this is showing us the areas
that are transparent because the mask is hiding them now let's zoom in to 100 magnification so you
can see where the selection wasn't accurate this is where we still see some areas of the original
final background image but you might also find areas where the subject is being partially
hidden the way we fix these is with the brush tool to do this it's a good idea to have the
hardness and opacity both set to 100 it makes it easier to paint with Precision now we can paint
onto the mask with black to remove The Unwanted background if you find you remove parts of the
mask in error switch to painting with white on the mask black will hide the areas of the layer
whilst white will reveal them when you're happy the mask is making an accurate selection of this
subject you can make the background layer visible again no we'll duplicate the background layer a
second time as before right click on the layer and then choose the duplicate option the next
step is to load the mask that we've just created as a selection the way to do this is hold down
the Cmd key on a Mac or the Ctrl key on a Windows PC and then click on the layer mask you
can then see the marching ants appear around the subject we're going to to use this to remove the
mount from our duplicate image layer but before we do that we first need to expand the selection we
can do this using the select menu and choosing the modify and then expand option you'll then
see this dialog where you can enter the number of pixels to expand the selection by I'll use
10 pixels for this image as it's quite a large image the reason we're expanding the selection is
to avoid leaving any of the man's outline when we remove him then with the duplicate layer selected
choose the edit menu and the content aware fill option the green area you see in this dialog is
being sampled and will be used to replace the man over to the right side of the dialog you can then
see a preview of how the image will look when the man's removed don't worry that it doesn't
look convincing at this stage most of this will be hidden by the man in our other layer all I
then need to do to remove the man is click the OK button if I turn off the top layer you can
see the area is being filled we can then clear the selection by clicking the select menu and using
the deselect option the next step is to convert our background layer to a Smart object first be
sure to select it in the layers window by clicking it then use the convert for smart filters option
in the filter menu the next step is to apply the gaussian blur filter to the layer which
you'll find in the filters menu after adjusting the level of the blur you can close the dialog
if I hide our blur background layer you can see the change this has made but notice
this packaging to the right hand side of the frame it's also been blurred and it doesn't
look quite right that's because it's a similar distance from the camera as the man the way we
can fix this is by adding a new empty layer mask to the smart object we can then select
the gradient tool and use a black to white or black to transparent gradient now we can use
this to draw a gradient on the right side of the layer this prevents that side of the image
from being blurred and because it's a gradient it fades the effect after that we can adjust
the level of blur that's being applied to the background let's compare that to the original
image now as you can see we've produced a nicely blurred background helping to highlight the man
now if you're wondering why I used a smart object for the background and what else you
can do with these watch this video next thanks for watching today and I hope you enjoyed the
video don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you soon for another video