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When your image has a major flaw that can’t be masked or cropped, the new Spot Healing
Brush tool in Photoshop CS2 will paint away entire foreground elements and replace them
with interpolated background data—all with just a few swipes of the brush.
Picture this… I’m the art director for
Rock Heap magazine. It’s not the most
widely read magazine in the world,
but for people who love rock heaps,
it’s indispensable. For the May cover
story, the photographer has provided
a rock heap photo so amazing it will
change the industry forever. But the
photo has a problem: There are two
distracting people in the foreground.
How can I eliminate entire humans
without it looking obvious? After all,
it’s not a simple task like removing
skin blemishes. But with the spot healing
brush tool in Photoshop CS2, it
actually is. Using this tool, I can paint
away elements and Photoshop will
fill in the gaps with interpolated data
from surrounding areas of the image.
I opened the image and selected the
spot healing brush tool from the toolbox.
(Press Shift-J until it appears.) In the Options
bar at the top, I set Mode to Normal
and Type to Proximity Match, which tells
Photoshop to sample the surrounding
pixels and fill the desired region with
them. I clicked the Brush preview in the
Options bar to access the brush settings
box and set Diameter to 63 pixels, which
is a bit smaller than the size of the adult’s
head in the photo. It’s a good idea to
make the tool’s Diameter fairly small in
relation to the size of the subject to be
eliminated. If Size is set to Pen Pressure
or Stylus Wheel at the bottom of the
Brush preview box, set the option to Off
because it tends to cause problems with
this sort of work.
I started the removal process in the
area of the image that contained the
most available background data—the
top of the foreground subject’s head,
which is surrounded by a good mix of
rock texture. Remember Photoshop is
sampling surrounding data, so if I started
with the tool in the middle of the subject,
I’d end up with unwanted samples from
the pants and shirt. On the first stroke,
I painted a small zig-zag from the top
of the subject’s head to the shoulders.
I continued painting down the subject
in a horizontal zig-zag, making sure to
completely cover the subject and even
paint a bit outside the subjects’ edges.
I stopped when I reached what appeared
to be a drastic change in the background
texture—a deep shadow in one of the
neighboring boulders. Otherwise, if I
continued to make a stroke through the
shadow, it would have been sampled
along with lighter areas and inappropriately
distributed throughout the region
I was working on.
Since there is some directionality to
the choice Photoshop makes in terms of
what data to sample, I switched to a vertical
zig-zag pattern and made a down
stroke. I continued to use this stroke until
I was clear of the large boulder’s shadow.
I now switched back to using the tool
with a horizontal zig-zag stroke to finish
removing those pesky humans. After I
had reached any kind of definite pattern
in the image, such as the pavement line, I worked more carefully using short, deliberate
strokes that followed the contour
of the pavement line.
The rest was just a matter of touching
up any areas that I thought were flawed.
This process is best accomplished by
applying quick dabs with the tool at a
small Brush size to maximize detail, or
at a large size to maximize smoothness.
It really depends on the background
texture and requires some trial and error
to get it right.
That’s all there is to it! A few quick
swipes and the distracting people
have disappeared, leaving a pristine
rock formation and preserving the
editorial mission of Rock Heap magazine.
No two interpolated strokes look
the same, so for your images, try out
variations of brush sizes and stroke
patterns to see what works best.
Click to enlarge
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David Nagel is the executive editor
of Creative Mac, an online publication
for professionals in creative
production, including multimedia
authoring, design, animation, and
video. For more information, visit
creativemac.com.
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