PSE7 and removing an item from the background?

[fiveoboy01]

I'd like to remove this water tower from the background.

I can do it using the clone stamp tool but it is time consuming and I have quite a few shots that I'd like to get this water tower out of. I did a youtube search and that didn't turn up much. Can anyone help? Thanks...

 

[musicaleCA]

Er, clone stamp is the easiest and fastest way to do it. It's quick and easy if you know how to use it.

 

[fiveoboy01]

Ok, any tips on using the clone stamp tool in such a way that will speed up the process? Excuse my ignorance on the subject...

 

[musicaleCA]

Use a new layer and do your cloning on that. Then you can easily erase mistakes (like cloning over the car), and blur and smudge it to your heart's delight to clean it up. Or dump the heal brush on it too. It's just a heck of a lot easier to fix mistakes if it's on a separate layer.

 

[ocular]

Use a new layer and do your cloning on that. Then you can easily erase mistakes (like cloning over the car), and blur and smudge it to your heart's delight to clean it up. Or dump the heal brush on it too. It's just a heck of a lot easier to fix mistakes if it's on a separate layer.

Never use the blur tool, don't even think about touchin it, in most cases it sucks!

Click me

Ok I only spent 10 minutes on this, so there's still some crap left next to the car, but over all pretty good, oh and I hate editing jpegs grr. Anyway I used the pen tool to select the tower through the back seat window and cloned it out. Then I used the clone tool with a thick brush and u guessed it. Then I used the patch tool.

hrmm, do I have to be supporting member

it ?

 

[musicaleCA]

No, you don't.

And methinks you haven't used the blur tools enough in Photoshop to be comfy with their behaviour. (A simple guassian blur can fix many, many problems, particularly when dealing with very continuous, gradient tones like in the sky of the above image.)

 

[ocular]

No, you don't.

And methinks you haven't used the blur tools enough in Photoshop to be comfy with their behaviour. (A simple guassian blur can fix many, many problems, particularly when dealing with very continuous, gradient tones like in the sky of the above image.)

The patch tool clones and blurs, I tyred a blur before using patch tool but didn't go over well. Want to give it a try, show us you try ?

 

[musicaleCA]

The patch tool is a little more sophisticated than just cloning and blurring. It samples from one area, and applies that texture to the target area, but it does so while maintaining the same luminosity of the target area and, I suppose the best word would be blending it better with the target area. Great for retouching blemishes, or patching-up clone stamp work, but it's entirely unsuited to completely removing a particular part of the image and replacing it with another, as is the case here.

When I talk about using blur I mean using it to fix-up the patchy clone stamp work. The clone stamp, unless you feather it, and even then, has pretty patchy results. Using the heal brush and going around those little harsh transitions can help matters, or just applying a gaussian blur to the layer if you don't care to much about accuracy.

My edit. Not really different. Butchered the edge, but it's easier to preserve those details when you have more pixels to work with (and less CA; maintaining the CA so that it's uniform was the most tricksy part). I added a little unsharp mask too. But, clone the tower out, heal brush the blochiness to get relatively even tones in the sky again, and that's about it (I also liquified it to help finagle the edge to where I wanted it).

 

[ocular]

When I talk about using blur I mean using it to fix-up the patchy clone stamp work.

I know, we're both on the same track.

Only thing is, your render is lighter, and is "bleaching" the sunset. You can tell if you load both jpegs side by side in ps.

 

[musicaleCA]

Lend that to me overdoing the unsharp mask (and forgetting to mask it out on those tones). I'm tired. Leave me alone.

 

[UUilliam]

Clone stamp is the best and quickest way to remove it, Just get a large Soft brush (hardness = 0%)
Then create a new layer and make sure Sample all layers is selected (by making a new layer it means if you mess up a bit of the cloning you can easily erase it)
just brush over the tower leaving a cap between the car
once you have done this make your brush smaller and zoom in as close as you can (only colse enough that allows you to still recognize what part of the image is what...)
and just brush as close as the car you are willing to go, it should work very well

 

[fiveoboy01]

Thanks guys for the help. Much appreciated