Lets first take a picture that we want to modify. We have done the corrections in the photo that are required like the curves, <a class="zem_slink" title="Colorfulness" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorfulness">saturation and others. So, here is the photo after the modification. Now we will make the modification to make photo de-saturated other than the subject of interest.

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/gallery/home/DSC_0018.jpg"><img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/gallery/home/DSC_0018.jpg" alt="DSC_0018" />

Okay, now fire up gimp and open the <a class="zem_slink" title="Image" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image">image in gimp.Once the image is open, on the left bottom of the image, you will see a square. Click on the square and the whole image will become red. Now, select eraser tool and erase the color from the subject of interest.

After this step, the image in gimp should look like this.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-2460" title="Screenshot GIMP" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Screenshot-DSC_0018.JPG-4.0-RGB-1-layer-3690x2460-–-GIMP-300x220.png" alt="Screenshot GIMP" width="300" height="220" />

After this, click on select and then select invert. With this, you have the whole background selected.

Apply de-saturate and you are done. Here is the final output from the above step. (Took me around 5-10 mins only)

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/gallery/home/DSC_0018-1.jpg"><img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/gallery/home/DSC_0018-1.jpg" alt="DSC_0018-1" />

Hope this helps you too 🙂 to make some of your photos stand out.

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