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The photo below shows a variety of contemporary Native American pottery. The checkerboard pattern pot is from the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. These pots are made by the coil process with hand made clay made by the artist. The precise and intricate patterns are applied with a very thin brush made from the leaves of the Yucca plant. Then the pots are fired outdoors using a wood fire. But I digress. There are times when you wish to place the emphasis on one object, such as the checkered pot, and make the surrounding objects less important. Here is a technique for making this happen.
Clone the image (Ctrl k). Open XPE. Make the cloned image darker by moving the Brightness slider all the way to the left, and blur the image by moving the Blur/Sharpness slider all the way to the left. Apply the changes. NOTE: The Brightness and Color Intensity sliders have a range of -50 to +50. You can increase this amount all the way to -100 and +100 by entering the number in the text entry box and pressing Enter to apply the change.
Select the cloned photograph and send it to the back (Ctrl b). Select the original photo (the one without the revisions) with the Transparency Tool. From the drop down list of Transparency Shapes on the Infobar, select Circular. Drag the center of the transparency to the center of the checkered pot and reduce the width of the circle by dragging the outside control handle (the square at the end of the arrow point) towards the center. Change the Transparency Type to Bleach. Click the Profile arrow icon on the Infobar and apply a Profile 2 preset setting.
Here is the modified photo. The emphasis is definitely on the checkered pot now with the other pots out of focus.
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