A few hints on using the Clone Stamp tool in Photoshop to remove objects from photos.

Open the image that you want to work with. You can practice with this image of a church with a telephone pole and lots of other objects: removeobjectsmall.jpg

Rotate the Image by 90 degrees counter clockwise. Image > Rotate Canvas > 90 CCW.

Set the Zoom on the image to 100% by clicking View > Actual Pixels from the menu.

Before you make any major changes to an image, you should make a duplicate of the image. You can do this in the Layers panel (Window > Layers). Right click the Background layer and select Duplicate Layer. Name the layer church copy and click OK. This protects the original image. If you decide that you don’t like your cloning and you want to start over, drag the church copy layer to the trash icon in the Layer panel.

Select the Clone Stamp

In the Clone Stamp options (top of the screen, below the file menu) select a brush size that’s not too large. You want the brush to be slightly larger than the object you want to remove.

I set my brush to a 17px soft brush tip. The soft brush tips have a blurred look to them. I think using a soft brush with this technique makes the editing less noticeable.

In the options set the Mode to Normal and the Opacity and Flow to 100%.

We are going to essentially copy (or clone) blue sky and clouds over the telephone wire. First you must set the source (or area that you want to copy from).

Scroll to the top of the image so that you can see the top of the telephone wire. Make sure that the church copy layer is selected in the layers panel. Position your mouse to the right of the wire. Hold down the Alt key on the keyboard (you will notice that the cursor changes - see image to the left) and click the mouse once. You have set the “source” for the clone.

Move your mouse over the wire, hold down the left mouse button and paint over the wire with up and down strokes. The circle in the image to the right indicates the area being painted, the cross indicates the source area. You want to work parallel to the wire, do not move the mouse left and right; instead brush up and down. If you move the mouse to the left and right you will end up painting the wire in a new location.

As you work down the wire you may need to increase or decrease your brush size. You may also need to set new source points along the way.

Another technique for removing objects is using the lasso tool. You could use this technique to remove the concrete fence, garbage can, and car. You can cover all of these objects with snow.

Make sure that the church copy is selected. Click the Lasso tool . Set the Feather to 5 px in the options (this helps to blend the edited area). Draw a selection around a patch of snow. Press Ctrl+J on the keyboard to copy the selection to a new layer. You won’t be able to see the copy of the snow, but it’s there. It’s been duplicated right over the original. If you look at the layers panel you will see that there is a new layer called Layer 1.

Select the Move tool . Hold down your left mouse button on top of the area that you selected earlier and drag the new patch of snow over the fench.

You can repeat this process to cover the fench. You need to be sure to select the church copy layer each time you want to make a new copy of snow. You also need to be sure that you are selected “snow” from the original image and not from a layer copy. You can also duplicate patch of snow, Layer 1, by right clicking the layer and selecting Duplicate Layer. Remember, each time you duplicate something it is placed directly over the original object.

Here are a few additional tutorials for using the Clone Stamp in Photoshop:

Cloning Stamp - The Basics of the clone stamp tool.

Photoshop: Clone Stamp - The basics of the clone stamp tool. There are a few other Photoshop tutorials on Stephanie’s site that you may enjoy.

Clone Stamp - Using the Clone Stamp to copy an image from one document to another.

Creating Full Photo Backgrounds Using the Clone Stamp - This tutorial was written for people who are into scrapbooking, it’s a cool technique for creating greeting cards, post cards, and web images.