Some elements of images are easy to remove with a quick use of the clone stamp. Some, however, swiftly become a nightmare as perspectives and light ruin the effect. Here’s how to remove anything from an image, even if it’s taken at an angle.
Certain skills in Photoshop are little like insurance policies: you often don’t think about them or even care to take an interest in them until you need them, by which point it might be too late. In the early days of my photography endeavors I distinctly remember arranging a shoot for a band. We secured a great location and we had a number of ideas. We started shooting and were enjoying the results. Then we took one shot — which became our favorite and ended up being the flagship image — and it wasn’t perfect, but in a way we couldn’t fix. The problem was that the location had a lot of expensive furnishings that were strictly “do not touch,” let alone move. “No worries,” said I, “I’ll fix it in Photoshop.”
Well, fix it I did (although looking back, not perfectly,) but I underestimated that task and then some. The intrusive object was intricate, large, and shot at an angle which meant that it ran through a fair portion of the depth of the frame. The result was that cloning it out in the way I knew how, created almost as many problems as it solved. Hand on heart, I don’t recall how I finally got it looking decent to anyone who isn’t a retoucher or Photoshop wizard, but I can tell you it wasn’t using this far better technique.
