SELECT BACKGROUND

[Paresh]

is there a way to select the opaque background in this image to smooth it out? Thanks.

[Alfred]

I haven’t tried this with your image, but it would probably be easier to select the foreground, copy it to a new layer and then apply an Average Blur to the original layer.

[Old Bruce]

2 minutes ago, Paresh said:

is there a way to select the opaque background in this image to smooth it out? 

There are several ways to this, many of them are quite involved and will take a fair amount of time. I would start by working on a duplicate layer to be safe. 

Make a threshold adjustment so as to get the branches and leaves which are mostly much more dark than the background. Select the black area and make a spare channel from the selection. invert the spare channel and use that to select the background and blur it with a horizontal motion blur.

[Paresh]

Thanks I will try each of those!