background blurry and a different colour

[Michael I]

Hello

can some one explain to me step by step how i change the following on the photo included?

First of all i dont want to change anyhting about the woman in the orange sweater and the man in the blue shirt.

But i would like to make the background blurry and put a white colour layer on top of the blurry background.

Who can help me?

Thanks in advance!

Michael 

[Alfred]

1. Select the background with the Smart Selection Brush Tool

2. Duplicate the selection

3. Add a Gaussian Blur effect to the selected region

4. Add a white Colour Overlay effect

5. Lower the opacity of the colour overlay until you get a pleasing result

[GarryP]

On top of the advice given by Alfred above, I would suggest (unless they are required) that you also try to use one or more of the ‘healing-type’ brushes – Healing, Blemish Removal, Clone, etc. - to remove the three diagonal red lines (two on the woman’s hand, one on the side of the man’s head). See my first attached image where I have used only the Healing Brush to very quickly remove the line on the man’s head.
Also, I notice that there is quite a lot of ‘striping’ (don’t know what the real term is) in the image, see my second attached image. These brushes could also be used to remove most of that quite quickly.