8 replies to this topic

[Photographa]

In this tutorial I'll show you all how to use Photoshop's Spot Healing Brush to remove small unwanted objects from your photos, such as someone's hand in the corner of your photo or an individual in the background. This technique can also be used to remove unwanted facial features or fix spots someone's clothing.

 

This is a photo by Paul Stevenson that has a few pages in the background - I want to remove these pages. I'll open up the photo in Photoshop and select the Spot Healing Brush tool from the left (it looks like a band-aid).

 

 

The Spot Healing Brush is a powerful tool, but when we want to remove objects to make it as if they were never there, we'll want to use the content-aware mode of the tool. Select this mode from the top of your window.

 

 

At this point, using the tool is as simple as using the brush to brush over areas you want to disappear. Photoshop will delete those areas, and will intelligently gather information from the content around that area to fill in the blank area. This works best with a soft brush, so you don't get a sharp edge between the original content and the computer-generated content. This also works well if there's a pattern in the background, such as water, grass, or a fence.

 

[Amy]

Good tutorial! I know that for more complicated situations, when content-aware just can't seem to work right, you can also use the clone stamp tool to remove parts of an image (like a crease in a scanned image, unwanted spots on a black dress, maybe a watermark).

 

What you do is you select the clone stamp tool, you hold down the option key and click a section you want to "copy" from, and then you click on the section where you want to "paste" that copy. It's basically an easy way to selectively replicate one section of the photo on another section, and it helps if you do it with a soft brush because it'll mix very nicely.

[nolvorite]

Wow can't believe I never knew this

The only problem I'd get is if it looks like the affected part was a bit smudged after the change but that won't need a whole lot of fixing

[Photographa]

Wow can't believe I never knew this

The only problem I'd get is if it looks like the affected part was a bit smudged after the change but that won't need a whole lot of fixing

 

It's hard to do without some smudging unless you're fixing a perfect pattern. However, the tool is great in some cases where you want smudging, which is why I'd recommend using a soft brush that'll smudge the edges. This would include something like removing an imperfection from someone's face, where a bit of softness is welcome!

[nolvorite]

True but if you want to get rid of some object like in the tutorial the smudge could be something noticeable.

[Mr.Panos]

Very interesting tutorial, I would like to ask something. Can I do the same thing with an older version of Photoshop? For example, with a Photoshop CS4 ?

[Photographa]

Very interesting tutorial, I would like to ask something. Can I do the same thing with an older version of Photoshop? For example, with a Photoshop CS4 ?

 

Content-aware was introduced in Photoshop CS5.

 

You can use the Clone Stamp tool to easily copy one area of the photo onto another area. It takes a little longer but you can achieve the same results, and it gives you more control over what you're replacing with what.

I'd still recommend using a soft brush with Clone Stamp.

[Mr.Panos]

Okay, thank you!

[milksheikh]

Wow, that is really cool. I never knew that was possible with photoshop. I use photoshop mostly for transparency and adding transparent things to non-transparent pictures. Thanks for this nice tutorial/info.