Delete people from photos

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

Been wanting to try this for a while and finally found a place with enough people moving around in the same area to try it.

Before

After

​

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.

 

[Michael J.]

That should be pined

 

[480sparky]

Or use a 10-stop ND filter and a 30-second+ exposure.

There were about 15 people in this shot:

 

[wev]

Or lots of police tape till you are done

 

[Scott Murray]

Looks like it removed the Flag aswell

 

[Moab Man]

That worked really well Don. I'm glad I stumbled upon that tip and that it worked so well. Thank you for trying it out. I just hadn't got to it.

 

[Don Kuykendall_RIP]

Looks like it removed the Flag aswell

The flag looked strange after it was done. It was about half transparent so I just removed it with the clone tool.

That worked really well Don. I'm glad I stumbled upon that tip and that it worked so well. Thank you for trying it out. I just hadn't got to it.

I have been trying to find a place/time to try it also. The times where there were enough people around I did not have my tripod. Today I went prepared. The procedure in Photoshop went well also. It took about 5 minutes to process from load to save.

Thanks for the great tip Moab Man!!!

 

[RockyNH_RIP]

Nice test Don! Thanks for spending the time and sharing...

Pat in GA

 

[Rick M]

Very cool Don!

 

[Nikkon]

Thats amazing! Thanks for sharing.

 

[sonicbuffalo_RIP]

Definitely should be pinned.....how about it! Very cool implementation.

 

[cwgrizz]

Extra information some may be able to use.

After seeing this, I checked out GIMP to see if it offered something similar. In my search the G'MIC add-on to GIMP filters has the option for Median merge which will also do it. Additionally I found ImageMagik can do it also. Both software packages are free. I haven't tried either yet, but will try it out when I have the opportunity.