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Let’s get to a more interesting, "artistic" application. Say I have a picture of a blue ribbon eel from the muck at the bottom of the Lembeh Strait in Indonesia, a little guy just a couple of inches long. And I feel like the picture could benefit from de-emphasizing the sandy bottom near the eel, trying to make that space more negative in relation to the primary subject. Here’s an image after just a little application of Levels to brighten the mid-tones a bit and Curves to increase contrast slightly:
The first thing I’ll do before any more editing is duplicate the layer, and you’ll see why in a second. Your image editing application does feature layers like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, doesn’t it?
Then using Photoshop’s Lasso tool 
I select the left side of the image, the area I want to de-emphasize:
I intend to darken and blur the left side of the image a bit to de-emphasize it, to make it more into negative space, to allow more attention to be focused on my primary subject, the eel. I try to follow along some of the contours in the image so my changes will look natural. I don’t need to be too precise right now, and you see my selected region overlaps the eel somewhat, because I am only editing the top layer. You’ll see why in a second. If your imaging application doesn’t allow the use of layers, you will have to be more precise and draw your selection away from your primary subject, so you do not edit your primary subject.
After selecting the area I want to darken, I feather the edge of my selection by some number of pixels (in Photoshop it’s under Select -> Feather. . .). Feathering softens the edge of the selection, and allows the changes I make to be applied gradually from the edge of the selection so it blends with the unselected part of the image. How many pixels you enter as the "Feather Radius" depends on your image and it’s size in pixels – how wide you want the transition region between edited and unedited to be. I decide to feather by approximately the width of the eel.
Now, making sure I am editing the top layer, I use Curves to darken the selected part of the image. Alternatively I could use Levels, but Curves gives me more control. And then I use Photoshop’s Gaussian Blur Filter (Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. . .). It’s best to have the image magnification at 100%, or close to 100%, when you are deciding how much blur to add. And then I use Hue/Saturation to desaturate, to turn down the color a little bit. (In Photoshop, I hide and make visible again the selection edges - the "marching ants" - by clicking on View -> Extras or View -> Show -> Selection Edges, to help see what the changes look like before I click OK in a tool to apply the changes.)
Since my selection included a bit of the left side of the eel and I feathered by a good number of pixels, I have changed not only the negative space but also part of the eel. But I only edited the top layer "Background copy" in the layer stack-up shown. I have not touched the original bottom layer.
To restore the eel I zoom in to get close to the eel and use Photoshop’s Eraser tool 
to erase the darkened portion of the eel on the top layer "Background copy" so that the unaltered eel on the bottom layer "Background" is revealed. I set the Eraser tool’s "Hardness" to 50% so that the edges of the eraser blends smoothly. Be sure you have deselected the region that you were editing before you start erasing, or you will only be able to erase within the selected area (that will drive you nuts until you figure it out; "Why the !&#$ isn't the eraser working!?). I turned off the visibility of the bottom layer in the screen shot below while I was erasing the top layer to show you the hole I was creating in the top layer:
The erasing here would be the most time-consuming part of this edit job. If you are editing negative space far enough away from your primary subject, so the primary subject is not affected, then this trick with erasing the top layer to reveal the unedited subject on a lower layer wouldn’t be necessary. Here’s what it looks like after I finished:
To finish it off, I repeat the same steps on the right side in front of the eel:
And finally I decide, hey, let’s try it in a vertical format, and I used the Photoshop Crop tool 
Here's a thumbnail of the original and the final result:
So take your time with it. Look at your picture critically, decide how it might be improved keeping in mind what tools like the Healing Brush and Curves can do for you, and make small, incremental changes along with the way. Make a change, try something out, and Undo it if you don’t like it. Always work on a copy of your original, so your original is always intact and you can go back to it and start over if you want.
Previous: Selective Enhancement of Images - Part I
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