Photo Edit

I thought I would share a little photo edit that I did for one of my layouts. I had originally thought there were some problems with the photo myself, but I was lazy and figured it didn't matter. But then when I showed my layout to the scientist, he clearly did not understand my layout. Here is the original layout, with the unedited photo.

"An Unlikely Pair"

I think my husband thought the "pair" was my son and the piggy bank.  But what I really meant as the "pair" was the piggy bank and the alien riding on top.  My son in the background is distracting.  Even though the alien is green, he almost disappears from the photo, I think because of the bend of the arm behind him - the eye just blends him into that shape, and the brightness of the pig and my son's tummy take over visually.  However, I actually like that my son is in the background, because, well, he was actually playing with these toys at the time, and that's what inspired me to take the photo.

My first thought was to try to blur out the background, and the scientist thought I should darken the background.  I did a little of both.  I used the Quick Selection tool to select the background elements in the photo.  I did a Gaussian blur of about 5 pixels, and added a low opacity gray fill layer to the selection.  Here is the before and after:

I think this is better. My son's presence is still there, but a bit muted.  Green alien gets his spot as one of the stars.  Hopefully, the idea I'm trying to communicate with the layout is more clear.  And best of all, I got to play around in Photoshop a little!