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Digital Photography Tips
Using Photoshop Elements 3 to Remove Unwanted Objects
By Mikkel Aaland
Adapted from Photoshop Elements 3 Solutions (Sybex)
Dateline: December 21, 2004
Version: Photoshop Elements 3
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Digital Photography tips
Many times a picture is perfect except for a power line or an unwanted sign or, for
that matter, an unwanted person who wanders into your shot. Sometimes all it takes to
get the picture right is a little Photoshop Elements blur here, or a burn there. Other
times you’ll need to remove the object entirely, and that’s when other techniques come
in handy. In this tutorial, I’ll show you a couple of ways to remove other kinds of unwanted objects.
Removing a Tarp from the Golden Gate Bridge
Photographer Monica Lee needed a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, but on the day she
picked to shoot it, the Highway and Transportation District wasn’t cooperating. As
you can see in the first illustration, they placed a yellow tarp right in the middle of the bridge.
Monica got the shot, and I helped her remove the unwanted blemish.
Who put that yellow tarp in the middle of my picture? (Photo by Monica Lee)
This is what I did:
- I made a selection from a nearby part of the bridge by using the Rectangular
Marquee tool, as shown below. I copied this selection and pasted it
on a layer that I called Fix.
I made a selection from a clean part of the bridge.
- I used the Move tool from the toolbox to slide the fix into place over the
yellow tarp. It didn’t match up perfectly, so I selected the Free Transform command
(Image > Transform > Free Transform) and turned the fix slightly so it
did fit (shown below).
 
I used the Free Transform command to position the pasted fix (left),
then used
the Clone Stamp tool to clean it up. The fixed image (right).
- I then used the Clone Stamp tool to remove the last bits of yellow on the
bottom. The results are shown above right.
Removing a Person
My wife, Rebecca, writes and photographs for a monthly column in Parents’ Press.
Mostly she takes pictures of our daughters and the daughter of her coauthor, or photos
of other known kids. If an unknown child slips into a photograph, Rebecca is required
by the magazine to get a model release before the magazine can use the picture.
Occasionally she gets a shot that she wants to submit but that doesn’t have a model
release.
That’s what happened on the left, below. The person sliding down the
slide is our daughter, so no problem using her image for the magazine, but who is the
person behind her? Using Photoshop Elements, I made the image publishable, as
shown on the right.
 
The child in the background is recognizable (left). After using the Burn tool,
the background child is no longer recognizable (right).
Here’s what I did to remove the unknown person: I first made a duplicate layer
of the background. Then I selected the Burn tool from the toolbox and selectively
darkened the boy’s face until it was unrecognizable.
For other pictures that contained unwanted or unusable faces, I’ve used the Blur
tool to achieve a similar goal. You can also use the Mosaic filter (Filter > Pixelate
> Mosaic) to achieve the blurred-face look used on real-life television shows to protect
someone’s privacy.
Scanning Digital: Digitizing without Owning a Scanner
You don’t have to own an expensive slide scanner to digitize your 35mm or APS film. A variety
of retail outlets will take your film and in return give you a floppy disk or a CD containing
a digitized version of your work. Just keep in mind that although these services are economical
and convenient, they may not provide the image resolution you need.
The Kodak Picture CD, which is widely available at most photo-finishing outlets, provides a
1536 × 1024 pixel file in the JPEG file format. This file has less resolution than that produced
by many digital cameras, although the resolution is adequate for monitor viewing or for making
small prints.
For higher-resolution scans, I recommend stepping up to the Kodak Photo CD process. Kodak
Photo CDs are more expensive than Picture CDs, and services that offer them are less widespread.
(For a listing of businesses in your area that provide Photo CD service, go to
www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/products/photoCD.shtml.) However, the Kodak
Photo CD process scans and stores your negative or slide in a proprietary format, which
allows for a single image to be stored in up to six different resolutions, ranging from 192 ×
192 pixels all the way up to 2048 × 3072 pixels.
Photoshop Elements is especially good at opening these files via the File . Open menu commands.
Just go to the Photo CD file folder named Photo_CD and open the images from a
folder titled Images. (Mac users: Do not open your images from a folder titled Photos,
which contains images saved in the PICT format and intended for screen display, not hardcopy
output.) A Kodak PCD Format dialog box appears after you select an image, offering you
choices of resolution and color profiles and thereby making it possible to open an image that
meets your exact requirements.
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This article is adapted from Photoshop Elements 3 Solutions by Mikkel Aaland and is reprinted here by permission. Copyright ©2004, Sybex, all rights reserved.
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