Editing Wedding Pics

Hey, guys. So the wedding came and went and I took some pics. And I just want to thank all you guys for the supportive and encouraging comments. You all are so sweet and it was much appreciated. The wedding was great. Taking pics at the venue was rather difficult though. As I said before, it was done at the Justice of the Peace which is downtown. Apparently, some festival was going on and there were booths and people everywhere. So, it was kind of tricky to get pics without people in the background. I did what I could but there are some good pics with other people in them. I wanted to try and edit the people out but I don’t have any photo editing software so I downloaded GIMP today. I am totally new to this program so I don’t know how to do much. I messed around a bit and here’s what I came up with. The first pic is the original. You can see the people in between the pillars, those are what I want to get rid of.

So, I started off by erasing them. I didn’t think it looked horrible since some of the pic is already rather white. But I knew there had to be a better alternative.

So I then discovered the tool to lighten specific areas. So I just lightened the area with the people. Which I don’t think looks too bad. It made them not so noticeable. I think it’s an acceptable way of doing things, but I’m not sure what else to do since I am so new to this program.

I figured I could try something with the layers, which I’ve messed around with a bit but wasn’t happy with the results. I also want to figure out how to darken the bright areas so they aren’t so blinding. So, which one do you guys think looks best? Also, if you guys know of any other techniques to help me with this, PLEASE let me know. I need all the help I can get! I’ll keep messing around with some stuff and maybe I’ll do some subsequent posts so you all can go through the learning process with me. :-P