Creating Visual Effects - Remove Unwanted Objects from an Image (Page 2 of 11 ) Before You Begin - About Tools and Tool Options
See Also - Repair Holes and Tears
- Erase Part of a Layer
- Replace a Background with Something Else
Using the Clone Brush, you can easily remove unwanted objects from an image, such as telephone poles, wires, trash cans, a thumb that wandered in front of the lens, or a few stray hairs blown in the wind, by simply copying over these distractions with pixels located somewhere else. To use the Clone Brush, you right-click on the image to indicate the source area, then you click or drag to paint with pixels copied from the source. Be sure to "cover your tracks," and avoid creating a noticeable pattern as you copy. The best way to do that is to lower the Opacity, Density, and Hardness settings so that the pixels you clone blend with existing pixels, paint with single clicks or very short strokes, use a large brush to avoid copying multiple times to the same area (but still small enough that you don't copy things you don't want), and vary the source area you're copying from by right-clicking to establish a new source point every so often. The source you select for the Clone Brush can be located within a different image, a different layer, or the same layer. For example, you might clone the sky from one image into another to brighten up a washed-out white sky. Or you might clone a squirrel from one photo onto the head of your brother in another photo to create a comic image.
Tip - You might also be able to remove objects from an image in the same way you repair tears and holes. See Repair Holes and Tears.
Select Clone Brush Tool Click the Clone Brush tool on the Tools toolbar. (If it's not displayed, click the arrow on the Scratch Remover tool and select Clone Brush.) Set Options In the Tool Options palette, select a brush tip, then enable the Aligned mode check box. Set other options as desired. For example, to copy visible pixels from a multilayered image, select Sample merged; to hide the "clone tracks," lower the Opacity, Density, or Hardness setting. You can build up an area slowly by lowering the Opacity setting and disabling the Continuous check box. This allows you to paint the cloned pixels a little at a time with each brush stroke.
Note - With the Aligned mode option enabled, the source point changes from the original source in the direction you move the mouse. If the option is turned off, the source point never changes, and you copy the same pixels with each stroke.
Establish a Source Right-click on the same layer, a different layer, or in another image to establish the location of the source pixels. Paint with Brush Left-click on the image or drag with short strokes to copy pixels from the source. Repeat until the repair has been made or until the undesirable object has been removed.
Tip - To change the source as you brush, right-click a different area or press Shift and left-click.
View the Result This photo of my friend Kate Garner and her family was snapped on a bright but overcast day. It's pretty good—the color is right, the image is sharp, and hey, everybody's smiling! But the all-white sky behind them looks like a large piece of cardboard. So I opened a photo taken in Hawaii—where the sky is never boring—and simply cloned it into the family portrait. I could have selected the sky area first so that I wouldn't accidentally clone over somebody's head, but instead I used the Darken blend mode, which tells the brush to paint over only those pixels that are lighter than the source. So the all-white sky gets painted over, but the darker hair and skin on the heads that happen to pop into the sky area do not.
Figure 15.2  This chapter is from Paint Shop Pro 8, by Jennifer Fulton, (Sams, 2004, ISBN: 0672323893). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today.
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