Isolating parts of an image...

Hi, I have a picture of a trumpet. I was wondering how you could take the image and blur the background, leaving the trumpet in focus. The "flaring" or putting lighting effects on certain spots of the trumpet, like the valve tops and bottoms. Could anyone explain how to do this? Thanks

heres the first part...
http://www.geocities.com/aptutorials/tutorial-focus.html

1. select the trumpet, either by using the pen tool, lasso tool, any other selection method, than inverse that selection and blur the background a bit.

2. I'm not quite sure about this, but you could paint a white blob on those highlights and than blur that. Just paint the highlights and remember to never use the lense flare filter.

A slight variation on the above:

Use the polygon lasson and trace around the trumpet (its better if you zoom into about 200% so you get a good clean cut) - if you make a mistake hit the Del key to backstep to the previous 'anchor'

Copy and paste what you've selected so you now have2 layers, the original and the cut version of the trumpet - which will be the top layer.

Blur the original by about 3%.

You can add flare highlights by using the Lens Flare effect or by creating a new layer, select a circular brush and guassian blur that layer by 2% so that it looks more like a highlight than a paint daub.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for all the help guys, and I know to never use the lens flare

1. when in doubt use the lens flare, It shows your "mad skillz"

tip out of design 101









;)

[shrugs] it depends on your application of it. A simple slap on Flare is cheap I know try being creative.

some people dont get sarcasim 0_o