Removing people - tip I found for PS

Moab Man

Senior Member
I haven't tried this, but it sounds like the perfect answer to getting rid of people.

Original article I stumbled upon: 9 Weird Photography Tricks That Actually Work! - Improve Photography

5. DELETE TOURISTS FROM TRAVEL PHOTOS

THIS LITTLE TECHNIQUE MAKES IT EASY TO GET RID OF THE TOURISTS IN YOUR TRAVEL SHOTS! (PHOTO FROM STOCK)
This is an awesome trick for travel photographers. Sometimes you’re at an amazing location, but there are people in the way of your shot. If you want to take a picture of a landmark and people are in your shot, you will likely spend the rest of your adult life cloning people out of the shot unless you try this technique.
Step 1: Set your camera on a tripod.
Step 2: Take a picture about every 10 seconds until you have about 15 shots, depending on how fast people are walking around.
Step 3: Open all the images in Photoshop by going to File > Scripts > Statistics. Choose “median” and select the files you took.
Step 4: Bam! Photoshop finds what is different in the photos and simply removes it! Since the people moved around, it fills the area where someone was standing with part of another photo where no one was there.
UPDATE: The “statistics” script mentioned here is only available in Photoshop Extended or in the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop; however, as someone mentioned in the comments, you can get a somewhat similar effect in recent versions of Photoshop Elements by going to Enhance > Photomerge > Scene Cleaner.
This tip is mentioned in an outdated article on lifehacker.
 
Copied and saved to my computer. I will be going out ASAP and trying this one. There are so many time I have just not taken a photo because there were to many people milling about to even think about taking them all out one at a time in PS.
 

wev

Senior Member
Contributor
Great for removing those bothersome birds messing up a good lake shot. Kidding aside, I have used this a few times doing my annual garden tour gig, but you have to watch foliage and such in windy conditions -- you can end up with some unintended editing.
 

Eyelight

Senior Member
This is behind the times. My 2 year old phone does it with one click.:cool: <<< Couldn't resist.

I've thought about it using multiple DSLR exposures, but hadn't tried and this looks easier than I had imagined. Good info.:applause:
 

skene

Senior Member
I usually just accomplish the same by slowing down the shutter speed... people will just pass right by you before the shutter closes.
 

skene

Senior Member
absolutely... Guess I forgot to mention that.

Just to add in, here is an image in front of the Venetian (IIRC) on the Vegas strip. There were approx 30 people that passed through this image within the 13 seconds it took to capture this. This is no editing just straight jpeg out of the camera. While you can see some motion blur shadowing on the lower half of the image, you can clean the rest up in PP.

SKN_7372.jpg
 
Last edited:

skater

New member
absolutely... Guess I forgot to mention that.

Just to add in, here is an image in front of the Venetian (IIRC) on the Vegas strip. There were approx 30 people that passed through this image within the 13 seconds it took to capture this. This is no editing just straight jpeg out of the camera. While you can see some motion blur shadowing on the lower half of the image, you can clean the rest up in PP.

View attachment 143002

It missed one - I still see Thomas Keller! ;)

Just kidding. But I do have a serious question: Would the long exposure trick work in sunlight/outdoors? I didn't think a ND filter would bring down the light THAT much but maybe I'm wrong - I'm not very familiar with them.
 

Eyelight

Senior Member
It missed one - I still see Thomas Keller! ;)

Just kidding. But I do have a serious question: Would the long exposure trick work in sunlight/outdoors? I didn't think a ND filter would bring down the light THAT much but maybe I'm wrong - I'm not very familiar with them.

The exposure is roughly 9 1/2 stops longer than a sunny 16 exposure, so you could get there using a 10 stop ND filter.
 
Top