How to remove? and CC pls.

[El2]

I tried to burn/soft brushed the background on this picture. But I can't get close enough and it's creating a halo. Also his left hand is OOF.

I would also love to get CC on any other technical stuff. Thanks!

Here are my settings:
Camera: Canon EOS 40D Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125) Aperture: f/2 Focal Length: 50 mm ISO Speed: 200 Exposure Bias: 0 EV Flash: Flash did not fire

 

[Jaszek]

Had the same problem the other day. Try zooming in really close and cloning it out.

 

[tirediron]

Really nicely posed. Your young fellow is a born model (and probably will be 'til he's about eight and gets tired of it). There are two issues I see with the image. The soft focus you've already mentioned; this can be cured with greater DoF and moving a little farther from the subject. Try this on-line DoF calculator to get a better understanding of how deep an area will be in focus at a given distance from the subject and aperture.

The other point is that the skin tones,especially his forearms and cheeks, as well as his hat, seem at least 2/3 of a stop over-exposed. Your best bet for scenes like this will be to spot metre the bright skin and base your exposure on that.

With respect to your question of the background, my solution would be elevate the child to a layer, and then work on the background without any encumberances. There are a number of excellent tutorials on-line for layers. I think I'd just move the exposure/brightness slider all the way to the left, after I'd cloned out that little light area bottom middle (top of his chair?).

 

[CraniumDesigns]

for the background, take the original in photoshop, duplicate the layer so you have 2 layers of the same thing, then burn the top layer, add a layer mask to that layer, and just paint black on the layer mask wherever u dont want the burn showing (over the child) and white whever u DO want it showing. google for some layer masking tutorials in photoshop.