Removing Obstructions in Photoshop

CSO

Let me start by saying everyone finds their own way of doing things in Photoshop. There are a million and one tools and filters and even though I have been working professionally in the promotional products/jewelry design field for ten years I have no idea what half of them are for. I have some basic classroom training and I did have a tutor one a week for six months or so which was helpful, I told her what I wanted to do and she showed me how to do it. It was helpful for work anyway because mostly what she taught me was how to use Illustrator to redraw things. All that said over the last ten years I have experimented my way into a type of proficiency that amazes me a lot of the time and my family and friends most of the time.

Today’s lesson, how to remove some unwanted objects from your pictures. It could be a stray hair, a pimple, a branch a blade of grass. Just to reiterate, this is how I do it. This may not be the best way, it may not be the way they would teach you in a formal class but it’s the way that works for me. I am including screen captures I hope you will find helpful. Personally I find this rather easy as long as you have areas large enough to sample from.

1.) Open your picture and make a copy of it. I do this as a general habit no matter what I am working on because you never know when you are going to want to go back to the original and capture something from it or start over. In this instance I used it at the end to create a side-by-side comparison. 

2.) Zoom in on the part you want to correct. This is very crucial to getting a recreation that is believable. You can zoom in so much that you will be able to see and replace one pixel at a time if necessary. (Image 1)