Photoshop 6 and backgrounds

[karalew]

I am not sure if this can be done. I have a bunch of photos I took a long time ago, before I was really trying to learn how to take photos. The photos have a lot of stuff going on in the background. (books, people, refrigerator, and etc) Is there a way in photoshop to make the backgrounds black or white, so that you can not see all of the extra garbage in teh backgrounds?

Thanks

[mshake5918]

Theres probably several ways to do this but the way I do it is to . This is using photoshop CS.

1) create a duplicate of the layer, under the drop down menu layer- duplicate.

2) now under Image-adjustments-desaturate. This will make the entire copy layer black and white.

3) now blur the image using Gaussian blur tool under the Filter-blur-gaussian blur. You can adjust how much blur you want with the slider tool.

3) now apply a layer mask, layer-addlayer mask-hide all. you should see the photo return to the original look now.

4) use the eraser tool to go over te background that you want to be black and white. If you erase to much then just click the background foreground tool and the eraser will put back the color instead of removing it.

5) after you get it all done then flatten the iamge. layer-flatten image.