How to make a blurred background for flowers!

This tutorial uses the layers in Adobe Photoshop© along with the brush tool and clone tool. If you are unfamiliar with these tools I have put a few YouTube links at the bottom of this tutorial for you to learn how these tools work.

Choose your photo you would like to use. I chose one that had other flowers around it.

Duplicate your background layer (Ctrl + J) for Windows, (Cmnd + J) for Apple. This is going to be your main layer and one that you can clone the flowers into different areas if you have voids like this photo above. I did choose only one flower to clone into the green area so I can have flowers all around the finished product. Your cloning does not have to be perfect as you can see in the example below if you don’t want it to be.

Background flowers with cloned flowers added

Once you have that layer the way you want it make another new layer (Ctrl+J) or (Cmnd + J) this is going to be your blur layer.
Go up to Filter then blur gallery then spin blur.

You will see a blurred section in the middle of your photo with handles you can use those handles to make your circle bigger or smaller. I made mine bigger.

Once the circle is sized to your liking you will notice a menu that popped up on the right side of the screen. This is where you control your blur angle/spin. I set mine all the way to the right.

Once you get things the way you like it make sure you click ok at that top of the screen.
Now with the blurred layer highlighted you are going to want to create a layer mask. (Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All) Below is what your layer palette should look like.

Set your layer with your mask on it to about 50% opacity so you can see where your flowers are underneath the layer mask.
You will then want to make sure you have clicked on the layer mask in your layer pallete. Once you have the layer mask selected you are going to want to click on your brush tool. White brush means your going to cover up and a black brush you are going to take away something. With a black brush and at 100% opacity start brushing over your main flower.
Once you have your main flower showing on top of the blurred section you can drop your brushes opacity to around 50% and you can always change this to make it to your liking. You will want to increase your brush size (use your left bracket to make the brush bigger or right bracket to make the brush bigger) for this step and just click once over the other flowers you want to show.