A photo with a distracting background can be improved simply by fading out the background. There are many ways to achieve that effect. One of the simplest is to select the background with the magic wand tool, then desaturate the background layer to zero. This gives a grey background that helps to focus attention on the main subject, which retains its full color.
Compare with the original, straight-out-of-the-camera jpeg here:
Compare with the original, straight-out-of-the-camera jpeg here:
