Generate a Patterned Layer

In the interest of time, without a lot of precision measurements, I'm going to 'emulate' the pattern in the sample, rather than trying to duplicat it. So, we'll need a nice, uniform pattern for the "lines" in the background. Sizing the pattern will be seat-of-the-pants -- looks about like 12 pixels off and 12 pixels on. So I'll generate a pattern and fill a layer with it before blurring.

 

Isolate the subject, create a glow

Now we've finished work on the background, and it's time to highlight our subject, and create her glow. Fitting, don't you think?

Now activate the view of your outlined subject. (Turn the layer on.) Cmd/click or ctrl/click the layer icon for her to generate a selection based on her outline. You should see racing ants appear. Now, choose Select > Modify > Expand and add enough pixels to cover at least part of the "glow" we'll be making. (There are other ways of doing this "glow" but this is the most straight forward and mechanical -- for a teachable moment.)

Photo tricks: Depth of Field

Add Depth of Field to Perk up Dull Photos... 

Perk up Dull Photos...

The life of a designer is often complicated by customer supplied photos. Many times there's little you can do to save them. One rule you can always count on is. . .

Isolation

One of the tricks I've always depended on is isolation. You can almost always add drama or focus the readers' attention by isolating the subject of an image. While there are many ways to do this, in some cases the best way is through depth of field.

 

Photoshop: Crop with Aspect Ratio

PHOTOSHOP PHOTO CROPPING is an essential part of preparation of most photos. Photoshop's cropping tool helps you refine the impact and message of your photos by cropping them to the task. Using the Crop Tool, you can crop your photos to specific photo sizes like 4x6, 5x7 or 8x10 by entering the width and height values into the Options Bar before dragging out your cropping border. You can also select a preset crop size from the Preset picker. However, you need a shortcut for cropping while keeping the width-to-height ratio the same as the original.

Without even looking at the size of this image, we wanted to zero in on the girl and the boat while trimming out most of the unnecessary background. How???