One Picture: Several Ways

I have this picture of my cousin M that I really liked. The only problem is that the background is way too busy. So, I tried several different techniques to try to downplay the background.

Here is the original, with some sharpening and lightening.



First I cropped the photo to get rid of some of that distracting background, no one likes a distracting background. In some of the images I blurred part of the background, and in some I didn't.

The first thing I tried was the selective sepia technique I tried awhile back. In this one I took out all of the yellow and green. It looks ok, but let's try something else.



This one I used the half sepia technique, plus I blurred the background. It looks pretty good. I kind of like how it looks a little old school.



This one is a half black and white technique. I duplicated the image and used my favorite black and white technique. Then I overlayed the two images and messed with the opacity until I was happy. I think it may be a little dark though, maybe if I lighten it up more I may like it better.



Finally, this is a combination of some black and white techniques, which I will talk about later. Again, it is a little dark.


Overall, I'm not all that happy with any one photo. I'll keep trying. Which one do you like? Do you have any suggestions?