Photoshop Help

W

WhiteLight

Senior Member
Hi All!

Haven't been around the forum as much as earlier or as much i'd like to be...
Just a lot of catching up with life.. seems like am always trying to catch up :D

Anyhow, i just recently started studying Photoshop and am taking it quite slow so i can learn better (read: no time :( )
But there is a small project i am working on & i have been stuck trying to work on one image for it...

I would like to post it here and have some one help me, but i think i need to do this by myself for various reasons.
Will post everything about it once it's completed..and successful ;)

I have a pretty decent landscape pic, but the foreground is completely riddled with bushes & leaves & twigs & branches.
in between all this the background is visible too, but these thingies are very distracting..

I tried using the content aware tool, but either i dunno how to use it well yet OR it just isn't cut out for all this complication cos it replaces the existing distraction with even more weirder stuff..

SO... anyone can guide me with the steps to do so i can save the image?
 
D

Don Kuykendall_RIP

RIP :(
WhiteLight said:
Hi All!

Haven't been around the forum as much as earlier or as much i'd like to be...
Just a lot of catching up with life.. seems like am always trying to catch up :D

Anyhow, i just recently started studying Photoshop and am taking it quite slow so i can learn better (read: no time :( )
But there is a small project i am working on & i have been stuck trying to work on one image for it...

I would like to post it here and have some one help me, but i think i need to do this by myself for various reasons.
Will post everything about it once it's completed..and successful ;)

I have a pretty decent landscape pic, but the foreground is completely riddled with bushes & leaves & twigs & branches.
in between all this the background is visible too, but these thingies are very distracting..

I tried using the content aware tool, but either i dunno how to use it well yet OR it just isn't cut out for all this complication cos it replaces the existing distraction with even more weirder stuff..

SO... anyone can guide me with the steps to do so i can save the image?
Click to expand...

I use that feature a lot. PM me if you want.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Post away, or PM me. There are two ways to use the content aware function, with the healing tool and with area fill. Very different and I've gotten very different results.

The healing tool can often be unpredictable, working well in some spots and not in others. I'll do as much work as possible with it and where it doesn't work so well I'll undo it and then use the clone tool to try and match it up on my own.

Content aware fill is very powerful and can yield some really good results when used properly. What you need to do is remove the area you want to fix (i.e. select it and delete it) and then while the area is still selected, widen the selection a bit to cover the cut edges, right-click on area and select Fill and make sure Content Aware is chosen in the dialog box. Depending on the size and variance of the area you may then need to go in with the spot healing and cloning tool and fix edges.
 
RockyNH_RIP

RockyNH_RIP

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
Post away, or PM me. There are two ways to use the content aware function, with the healing tool and with area fill. Very different and I've gotten very different results.

The healing tool can often be unpredictable, working well in some spots and not in others. I'll do as much work as possible with it and where it doesn't work so well I'll undo it and then use the clone tool to try and match it up on my own.

Content aware fill is very powerful and can yield some really good results when used properly. What you need to do is remove the area you want to fix (i.e. select it and delete it) and then while the area is still selected, widen the selection a bit to cover the cut edges, right-click on area and select Fill and make sure Content Aware is chosen in the dialog box. Depending on the size and variance of the area you may then need to go in with the spot healing and cloning tool and fix edges.
Click to expand...

I have an old version... does way more than I can BUT.. it does NOT do Content Aware.. :(

Pat in NH
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
OK, I hope you don't mind me posting this here, but it was easier than uploading the corrected jpeg somewhere and PM'ing.

Here's the original photo...

8694929957_0a89e6ff08_o.jpg


Lots of stuff in the foreground to get rid of, with details behind that you want to keep. Definitely needs a combination of the content aware healing brush and clone tool as content aware fill probably won't cut it with the diverse background. I start with the Healing Brush and attack a branch section at a time, reducing the size of the brush to just larger than the branch and then doing only a little bit at a time, and only sections with a similar background (i.e. don't cross from water to sand, or even light sand to dark sand). I started top center with the peninsula and worked down and out. After doing a small section I'd take a look and see what looked "fixed". I'd switch to the clone stamp, again with a very small brush, and find an original section of the photo that looked similar and clone a bit at a time. When I hit water I chose one of two sections of the river (the top split or the large area between the branches at the bottom) and would mark the center of that as my clone point and then paint small sections at a time, returning to/restarting from the same clone point again and again. For land/water borders I would take a clone point very close to the area requiring fixing and do the same thing, grab a point, fix a spot, go back, fix another spot. It is a tedious process, but if you bite a section at a time it's entirely possible. Spot heal, clone, spot heal, clone. Undo what doesn't work and try again. Work in really small bits, because going bigger introduces stuff from other sections. In some cases I would also change the opacity of the clone tool. I also worked with a soft edged brush to mask transitions.

This took me about an hour. I liked the furry branches so I left them in, showing you can be selective in what you leave behind - I just fixed the spots where branch types crossed. I believe if I had a RAW file to work with instead of a reduced jpeg it would have been cleaner, but I'm OK with the results for example purposes. If I had more details I would be able to get a couple problem sections much cleaner. I'd also look to some other photos taken at the same time to see if I had sections of those that I could use as a source for the clone tool.

8694929957_0a89e6ff08_fix.jpg
 
Roy1961

Roy1961

Senior Member
Contributor
Jake, i think you flew over to "where ever", cut the bush away and took this shot :D, please dont edit my shots as an LR4 or Elements is still a ways out for me. But wow, some difference.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Roy1961 said:
Jake, i think you flew over to "where ever", cut the bush away and took this shot :D, please dont edit my shots as an LR4 or Elements is still a ways out for me. But wow, some difference.
Click to expand...

Thanks. To make a point here based on your statement, while I did the work in Photoshop, there's nothing I did here that I couldn't have done in Elements 11 just as easily.
 
RockyNH_RIP

RockyNH_RIP

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
OK, I hope you don't mind me posting this here, but it was easier than uploading the corrected jpeg somewhere and PM'ing.

Here's the original photo...



Lots of stuff in the foreground to get rid of, with details behind that you want to keep. Definitely needs a combination of the content aware healing brush and clone tool as content aware fill probably won't cut it with the diverse background. I start with the Healing Brush and attack a branch section at a time, reducing the size of the brush to just larger than the branch and then doing only a little bit at a time, and only sections with a similar background (i.e. don't cross from water to sand, or even light sand to dark sand). I started top center with the peninsula and worked down and out. After doing a small section I'd take a look and see what looked "fixed". I'd switch to the clone stamp, again with a very small brush, and find an original section of the photo that looked similar and clone a bit at a time. When I hit water I chose one of two sections of the river (the top split or the large area between the branches at the bottom) and would mark the center of that as my clone point and then paint small sections at a time, returning to/restarting from the same clone point again and again. For land/water borders I would take a clone point very close to the area requiring fixing and do the same thing, grab a point, fix a spot, go back, fix another spot. It is a tedious process, but if you bite a section at a time it's entirely possible. Spot heal, clone, spot heal, clone. Undo what doesn't work and try again. Work in really small bits, because going bigger introduces stuff from other sections. In some cases I would also change the opacity of the clone tool. I also worked with a soft edged brush to mask transitions.

This took me about an hour. I liked the furry branches so I left them in, showing you can be selective in what you leave behind - I just fixed the spots where branch types crossed. I believe if I had a RAW file to work with instead of a reduced jpeg it would have been cleaner, but I'm OK with the results for example purposes. If I had more details I would be able to get a couple problem sections much cleaner. I'd also look to some other photos taken at the same time to see if I had sections of those that I could use as a source for the clone tool.
Click to expand...

Jake, very educational.. Thank you!

Pat in NH
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
One more hint here. When you do this work, start with creating a duplicate layer and working on that one. This allows you to turn off the new layer whenever you'd like and see what it used to look like (compare old and new) and also to use the mask to blend back in anything underneath that you might want after the fact. When you're done you can leave as is or flatten the image.
 
W

WhiteLight

Senior Member
That is totally unbelievable..
Gonna try this out and see if I can replicate... My only 'spanner in the wheel' was if what you've done was possible at all!
Thanks so much Jake and Don for offering and helping me out on this..


Sent from my HTC Incredible S using Tapatalk 2
 
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