I mentioned in my post yesterday that this picture I posted originally had a bunch of people in it that I opted to "erase" on Photoshop. Here is what the picture looked like, before I started messing with it.
To me, all the people in the picture were distracting so I removed them and I got a couple requests to go into further detail on exactly how I did it.
Well, basically I did the whole thing using the handy "Clone Stamp Tool." My first tip would be to zoom far, far into your picture. Next its helpful if the background is a nice even pattern. In this case, I had fences to work with and trees. You don't tend to notice if the lines of a fence repeat, because well, they should repeat.
I started with this section. Its a little blurry because of how far I zoomed into it.
Click on your clone stamp tool and pick an area you want to use to copy over your people. I picked an area of fence with no obstructions and hit "alt" to select my starting point. Then I moved my cursor over my first person and started covering him up with fence. While doing this, I always notice where my little "plus" sign is so I don't accidentally move it over a pattern I don't want copied.
The lines of the fence are so repetitive that you don't notice anything being "off" by adding more of them. However I did notice a repetition of leaves, but decided since it was so small and would be so far away that it wouldn't be noticeable while zoomed out. However if it were a bigger area, I probably would've covered it up so it wouldn't look obvious.
When I was done I moved onto a new area. In this one I picked an area of fence again but it there was a post behind the fence that started being added to where I was covering up. I could painstakingly go through each fence post and change the background, but again since it was so far away it wouldn't be super noticeable. When working with a larger area though this is something to pay attention to.
This part was a little tricky because the people were standing behind different backgrounds. There was floor, stairs, rails, leaves, grass. So I worked bit by bit. I used a stair to paint over his head with a stair.
I used the shrubbery around the rails to paint over that part and I used the convenient mess of the tree to paint over the rest. It changed the shape of the tree a bit, but as long as it looks natural, I think it works.
I slowly went through each section like this. I think the key is getting in close, taking your time, and making sure the new background you're "painting" on looks real. My result was more more serene and lovely.
Click here to see how a did the same thing at the very crowded Griffith Park Observatory with even more people around!
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