Important photo help

[timmy1729]

http://picasaweb.google.com/timothy....44406113060274

This is my wife's favorite picture of us at our wedding rehearsal dinner. Unfortunately, my sis-in-law took it with her 2MP camera. I know it can look better, but I don't know where to begin. I don't have much of an eye for that yet. Any help is appreciated!

[hawkeye60]

It's entirely up to you to decide, but I find the background a little distracting.

[timmy1729]

Hawkeye:
Thanks for the reply! Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do to make the background less distracting?

I know I have to make the final decision on what I do with the photo, but I'm fishing for suggestions to make it look decent.

Thanks again! :-)

[Verywierd]

You could start by getting rid of the dark object in the foreground and perhaps crop away some of the white foreground itself. They distract from the main subject.

[chillin]

I picture you sitting at a nice table.
I would use a Liquify tool & for the background I would put anything...

[CJ Swartz]

You can crop the image to eliminate some of the background and clutter on the sides.

You can select the background and blur it to hide some of the distracting areas - this is what a photographer would have done if they had taken the photo (used a lens that blurred out the background while focusing on you and your wife). You could also run a cutout filter (or other artistic filter) and levels on the background to reduce the distractions further but still give some sense of "place".

You can clone out the black thing on the table and you could also clone on some shirt sleeves to give you a more formal look. You could add some attractive food/drink item(s) in front of you as Chillin suggested.

You can then do a "gaussian glow" - duplicate your final layer and set the top to overlay blend mode, add a gaussian blur and reduce to taste - it gives a "glow" to skin. You can mask to bring out the eyes etc. to taste.

It isn't hard to do a selection of you and your wife and the table - you can use the pen tool or quick mask.

This is just a "sloppy - quick" way to show what I mean...

[Dave.Cox]

Maybe something like this

[timmy1729]

Hey everyone!
Thanks for the wonderful suggestions! I'll mess around with it and see what I can do. Thanks again!

[hopallong]

Heres stuff i like to do....

[0lBaldy]

Was looking at all your posts and found this one... so thought I would add my 2 cents worth

[Juliangelo]

Hey there Timothy
Ive just had a quick play with your pic
did a few things
Juliangelo