Winged Diva
Karen Burton
Sometimes you just have to take the picture - it's a fast moving scene and you cannot control the background. An image with distractions is far better than no image at all. That's what Photoshop is for.
The hall was full of visitors and the top and bottom of the image were quite tight.
The first step was to crop and use "Generative expand" to give some breathing room. This is allowed as all content comes from within the image. Cropping first also removes some distractions without any work - win win.
Next work around the image removing the visitors. There are several tools to help; Clone Stamp tool, Spot healing brush, Remove tool, actually painting with a brush or selecting an area and using Generative fill. You will need to use a variety of tools and not one tool will work for all circumstances.
Once you have a 'clean' image you can think about polishing it. Again every image needs different attention but Noise reduction, Selective Sharpening, Dynamic Contrast, some colour or tone enhancer and highlighting a specific area using Vignetting are all favourites.
For each of these tools less is more. Be very careful for each effect to enhance but not be seen. It is REALLY easy to move the slider too far and produce an unrealistic result.