Removing wires and poles

[Yno]

http://www.imawino.com/pictures/church1.jpg

I took this picture to practice some retouching techniques. I have played around a little, but obviously need more practice! I can remove the wires from the sky without a problem, but the rest does not look good at all. Without anyone going to any trouble to actually do anything with this picture, How would you attack the problem? I have decided that cropping out the pole is a good start!

[willpresley]

You might try cloning over the light and the pole and then trim it down with a crop to get rid of the rest of it.

[Shari]

The wires in photos are a pain aren't they. I did one recently and used the clone tool. Took quite a while but it worked. Make sure to enlarge the photo before you start the cloning. Good luck.
Shari

[Yno]

I am going to practice some tonight - with my new Graphire4 tablet! I went to CompUSA and bought a 4x5 to get the $30 rebate. For $70, I figure I can't go wrong.

[Wendy]

Hi Yno ..

the clone tool really is the best way to remove these from complex areas ... it just takes time and patience. So zoom in close and just do one small section at a time :)

Wendy

[Stringbean]

Well I’m always asking advice but for a change I will add to what has already been said here. The clone is the best way to go. I should imagine that the sky could be made a little more interesting. That’s something I will have to read up on. :)

[Wendy]

Hi Stringbean ...

Here is a suggestion for changing a sky :)

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?p=69564

Wendy

[Shari]

Wendy - what are you still doing up??? Or do I have my times wrong. Helping people as usual. Thank you.
Shari

[Stringbean]

Thank you Wendy for the tutorial. I had copied the picture that Yno posted and used it to practice removing the wires. I also wanted to replace the sky but couldn’t find one that I likes. I did use what I had available and used the instructions from Scott Kelby’s book that worked out quite well except that I needed to use the magic eraser tool. I will look around and find a lighter shy and try again using some of your suggestions. Thank’s again.

[Daviskw]

Hi Yno

I did some work so I could tell what problems you would have. I had trouble with the clap siding the wires somehow warped the alignment. So I copied other siding with a feather and placed it over the areas.

For the wire thru the tree to the right top I copied another section of tree limbs rather than try to clone the wire out.

The rest of the wires came out easy with the clone just be sure to click rather than drag and sample different areas.

I copied a large section of tree from the right side. Moved it over the pole on the left mid to top. Then grouped a layer mask and just painted on the mask to reveal trees and limbs only where needed to blend.

Then I copied a fern to cover the lower part.

Good picture of a nice old time church Good luck

Butch

http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/9981/church19ye.th.jpg (http://img138.imageshack.us/my.php?image=church19ye.jpg)

[Shari]

Butch - that is excellent. I see you have used the mask feature in that. I so wish I could get volume on my download so I could follow it. You are very good at the different actions in this programme.
Shari

[geogld]

http://home.earthlink.net/~geogld/PS%20Church-2.jpg
Go to url to see edited copy, view as a two photo slide show with original.

First I copied the vent slats in the lower set and using layers made an extended then merged the the two copies togather to create a new set for the upper unit. Next I placed the church as layer one and the vents in as layer two... adjusted and merged the layers.
My approch was to straighen the church with (image-Transform-Skew) the a scew left at the upper left to straighten the steeple and a pull down from the lower left to level the steps. I turned on the grid to use as a guide. Then cropped the photo to square things up.
I found the wires in difficult areas could be edited away by enlarging the area to pixel level and then using the pencil at one or two pixel size and sampleing several near by colors

[Yno]

Crikey, those are darn good results, and fast! I figure in a week or so I might come up with something about half that good. Amazing. Thanks for all the help.

[Stringbean]

Geogld - How did you do the tree in the top right to allow the sky to show through? Did you use the magic wand tool? Great job!

[geogld]

Hi
I am not sure but my guess is that you are talking about the wire running thu the tree. If that is the case, I just magnified the area to where I could see the pixcels, then I used the pencil set to one pixcel, set the color to the adjacent area be it sky or tree and made the wire disapear. You will notice that I had to change the pencil color several times as I made the wire invisable. Some times the other tools are not able to be adjusted fine enough to get the job done

Any more questions?

geogld :)

[apasskey]

Here is my first try at removing poles, concrete barriers, wires, and tops of cars. We had snow at pretty low elevations in Arizona, which is a rarity. I took this photo of Four Peaks and foothills out of the window of a moving car (I seem to do that a lot). I cropped out the barrier and the car rooftops. Then I used the clone tool to cover over the light poles. The photo was pretty pixelated because it was taken while we were going 60 mph down a busy highway so I applied a colored pencil filter to it. I really liked how it turned out.


http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1Cg5V26jyXAvYyhM7m0kdzlUUxBRQ

[Shari]

Andie - I am just getting around to reading some of the forum. I love your photo of Four Peaks - what filter did you use and is that the "showing off" tutorial? Very simple and beautiful. I also just looked in your gallery and your have some wonderful photos. You appear to be someone who enjoys life and I sure try to be that way too.
Shari

[apasskey]

Hi thanks for the approval! I am really new at doing this but I LOVE it!! I used the colored pencil filter ( filter > artistic > colored pencil) I used this because the photo was a bit blurry because of the speed of the car and pixelated because of the resizing I had to do after I cropped out the bottom of the photo ( car roofs and concerte barriers).

I am really tired so I can't figure out what you mean by the "showing off" tutorial but yes, my family and I try to do lots of playing!!
Andie

[Shari]

Thanks Andie. The "Showing Off tutuoral" s in the subscribers section in two parts and it finishes with doing a mat and border similar to yours. I like the way you did yours. I like simple and fairly plain effects.
Shari

[apasskey]

I used the "Creating a digital frame" chapter in Scott Kelby's Photoshop elements 4 book - page 371 - 375 to make my frame and mat. I use it so often that I have the page marked with a sticky note so I can go right to it.