Are there settings that allow user to focus only on subject....

making the rest of the scene out of focus? I'm not sure how that is done and maybe nothing under $500 will do that but I'd like to know because I love photos like that.
TY

What you're referring to is manipulating your depth of field to make it really shallow. You could shoot in aperture priority, but this camera doesn't offer it. Probably the closes you can come is the "Close Up" mode. One way you can "cheat" to do pull off the effect is to increase the distance between the background and your subject. The wider the distance, and the closer the subject is to the camera, the easier it is to focus on your subject and make the background out of focus. Then there's manipulating the image in a photo utility like Photoshop which would allow you to process the image just about any way you want.

But the effect your looking for is most easily accomplished in a DSLR camera where you can manipulate the lens to open it wide open and shallow the depth of field.