How to Remove Objects From an Image With Photoshop

Photography Tips

Photoshop has such a diverse range of tools and image editing capabilities that it’s hard for one person to learn how they all work. It’s easy to stick to what you know and need, but there are advantages of learning about some of Photoshop’s finer hidden gems. Listen to Hughes as he introduces us to Vanishing Point and the Path Tool, two lesser known options to use when removing objects from images:

Vanishing Point

In his sample photo, Hughes wants to remove a horse head and replace it by cloning it with a section of road that runs through the photograph. The problem is that the clone stamp will not clone in the correct scale. For this we’ll need to use the Vanishing Point feature.

The Vanishing Point Tool quickly and accurately replaced the dirt road.

Once you have made an accurate selection of the object to be removed, delete using the Content Aware Fill option. Photoshop will do its best to fill in the area where the object was using the content of the surrounding areas. In this case, it replaced the horse head with grass, which was close but not quite ideal.

To resolve this, Hughes goes to Filter > Vanishing Point.

This opens a new window that offers options such as its own version of the Clone Tool, a perfect choice for cloning in the dirt road while maintaining its perspective–something the regular Clone Tool would not be able to do.

Path Tool

Bryan O’Neil Hughes then introduces us to The Path Tool which is a great option to use when you are trying to clone out curved lines or objects, such as the telephone wire in the Before image below. Since you can’t Shift + Click a bent line, the Path Tool allows you to define the exact path of the object you are trying to remove.

A Before & After Look At A Wire Running Through A Photograph.

• Once you have the Path Tool selected, click at the beginning of the line you would like removed then click again at the other end of the line.
• Now, click once more near the center of the bend in the line and press and hold the Command or Control key, drag and bend the Path until it matches up with the line you are removing.
• Next, grab the Spot Healing Brush, change its size so it’s just slightly larger than the line you are removing, and make sure the brush has a hard edge.
• All you have left to do is go to the Path Panel on the right hand side of the screen and click on the Stroke Path With Brush option. Like magic, the line disappears!

Stroke Path With Brush makes for a quick, accurate clone.

That’s all there is to it! You now have two more fast and simple ways to remove objects from your images in Photoshop.