To remove a person or object from a photo in Photoshop can be achieved in a variety of ways. It depends on the photo and the object in question as to how you approach this task. In Photoshop you can use the Clone Tool to remove unwanted elements by covering them up with a layered clone of the existing photo. Or using the Patch Tool you can quickly draw a lasso around unwanted elements and drag to see them removed by quickly layering over the surrounded area of the original photo. A fast and automatic way is to use Content-Aware Fill, which you use by drawing a rectangle around your object or person, applying Content-Aware Fill and you will see Photoshop’s Ai automatically remove it.
If you want to use the same photo as me then head over to Pexels on this link.
Content-Aware Fill
I will be using this photo from Pexels and will be removing the lady from the field. So the best way to start when removing a person or object is with the Content-Aware Fill tool as it can get you 90% of the way to remove your unwanted element in the quickest possible way.
So I draw a loose selection with the Lasso Tool around my subject, I want to keep a little bit of the background in my selection so that the Artificial Intelligence has something to work from. Then once I have my selection go Edit > Content-Aware Fill. If this option is greyed out for you then your image is a Smart Object. Go to the Layers Panel, right-click your image and go Rasterise Layer – now try Edit > Content-Aware Fill.
You can see your preview from Content-Aware Fill – Select New Layer from the drop-down in Output Settings. Hit ok to output this. You will see the new layer which removes the person or object from the photo.
For some images, this process will be enough to remove unwanted elements and you can just carry on with other design work.
But you will notice in my image that parts look good and others look a little blurry or you will see obvious duplicates which need to be adjusted so that it looks a little more natural. Let’s fix that.
Fixing with Clone Tool
Create a new layer above your Content-Aware Fill layer. This is where you will paint your Clone Tool adjustments. Select the Clone Tool from the Toolbar. Change the Sample to All Layers. This will mean that your Clone Tool will look at all the layers that are visible when selecting what to paint.
The clone tool works by you choosing where the Clone Tool is looking and then painting that over the element you no longer want in your image. So I want to get rid of the duplicate trees in the background. By holding down ALT with the Clone Tool selected my cursor changes to allow me to choose a place for the Clone Tool to reference when painting. So I choose a different tree and sky in the image, then release ALT and now I can paint over the unwanted part of the image.
Do this process for anything that stands out to you as an obvious duplicate in the image.
Once you are happy with your changes you can flatten the image. I do this by using the short-cut CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-E this is a long short-cut but it flattens your image and places it above your layers. So you still have the layers if you need them but also get the ease of having a flattened image.
Patch Tool
Now there’s one area where the lady’s head used to be that looks like a strange shadow in the sky. Because we have flattened the image it means that using the Patch Tool will give us a really fast fix. The patch tool is great for spots and blemishes on people’s skin also as it’s really fast to draw around things you don’t want and choose what you want to replace it with by dragging the selection to a nearby area.
And that’s it for this photo. With just these three tools you can remove pretty much anything from any photo.
Extra Tip
If you are looking to make high-quality selections within an image so that you can more accurately remove people or objects from a photo then take a look at our Pen Tool guide for Photoshop 2022. It covers everything you need to make great selections within Photoshop using the Pen Tool.
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