It’s probably true that for many people the clone stamp tool becomes the first introduction to Photoshop - this might be because the first task that many people try to do when start using Photoshop is often about removing an unwanted object or a person from an image.
My task for today is to make alterations to an image shot at Peterhouse in Cambridge. The image was shot in the late October afternoon and aimed to capture the atmospheric moment and the quality of light passing through the arch and reflecting on the masonry. I had to be very quick to catch the light as the sun was about to hide behind a cloud. I wanted to have a picture without any people in the frame but I could not risk waiting for the young woman to pass outside the imaginary boundary of my picture. I took a shot noting that I would probably need to remove the figure in Photoshop at later stage.
Today I am going to do just that – to remove the figure of a young woman that happened to be in the shot at that moment of time. Below is the original image displayed in Photoshop.
I used the Blur tool to soften the face features to protect identity of the person.
Picture 1: Original image displayed in Photoshop
Before starting to work on the image, I created a duplicate layer to make sure that all the adjustments are saved separately without affecting the original image.
I started by making some slight adjustments to the picture to correct the angle of the frame. I used the crop tool with ticked Perspective box to define the boundary of the image.
Picture 2: Adjusting the angle with the Crop Tool
The image is now properly aligned and I am happy to start on the necessary alterations. To remove the figure of the young woman, I chose the Clone Stamp Tool. I clicked on the Brush dropdown menu in the top left hand side corner of the screen and selected a hard brush, diameter 60.
I started my work on replacing the figure with the matching background, using the Alt function (this function allows to make a selection for the replacement). The hard brush allows me to achieve more controlled results; the soft brush in comparison would create more of a blend from the pixels that are located inside and outside of the selected area. By using a hard brush, I avoid this effect and also avoid creating halos in my image.
