I wanted to have some fun so I chose this one to play around with:
This is a great picture of the bride and groom. However, the background is a bit distracting. No fault of the photographer, it's just what he had to work with. So I'm going to try and make the subjects pop a little more.
Three things stand out that just need to go. In the corner is a bit of a Christmas wreath, by the brides shoulder is a window frame, and just above the grooms head is a weird reflection that kind of looks like horns.
I use Gimp. It's this fantastic open-source program that does most things that Photoshop does.
Using the clone tool, I simply used elements of the background near the elements I wanted to remove and covered them up.
The next thing I wanted was to turn the background black and white. So I copied the layer, desaturated it, and using a layer mask, trimmed the subject from the color layer.
Then, using the blur filter, I made it the background fuzzy.
Then I cropped it to 8X10.
Here's the end result:
Here's the two side by side:
If you'd like a detailed account of the edits, let me know! I'll write it up.
PS. Here's a third iteration. This one took a little more work. Can you spot the changes?