Today’s tutorial is similar to our previous post: Remove Background/Cut Out Image in Fireworks/Photoshop, where we removed a foreground image for use on another background. This time we will do the opposite - remove a foreground object from a picture and keep the background with amendments to make it appear as though the object was never there to begin with.

We will be using the Rubber Stamp Tool (Fireworks) / Clone Stamp Tool (Photoshop) to duplicate areas of the picture to cover over the object we want to remove. We will be working in Adobe Fireworks to do this but the process is almost identical in Adobe Photoshop. So let’s begin…

Our example image is this moody looking scene of a cow in a field, taken from sxc.hu - the free stock photography website. We like the moody sky but we’re not so keen on the MOOdy cow, so let’s remove it!

The Stamp Tool

The problem we are faced with here is that if we just cut out the cow we’ll be left with a big white space in the middle of the image. The stamp tool allows us to duplicate areas of the photo and paste them elsewhere.

To use the stamp tool we must first select a source from where we want to copy from and then left click to “stamp” that copied area onto our new area (over the top of the cow).

To select the source hold Alt on your keyboard and left click the area you want to duplicate. Then, let go of Alt and left click on the area you want to place the duplication. When selecting a source, always stay close to the area you want to stamp to make the new background seamless with the areas around it.

For our image to look perfect, we will select a new source for every single stamp we do, and only use very small source areas. We’re using size 11.

The image above shows how we’ve removed the foot already, simply by duplicating the area around it and stamping over the top. We just had to decide what would be there if the cow wasn’t. Let’s take a closer look…

Above we’ve selected that little bit of hay for the source and when we click the duplicate area it will place the hay from the source in the circle. We are using a stamp size of 11 with an edge of 60. These values aren’t crucial, anywhere around these will do. Remember to keep it small though so it’s harder to spot any duplicate areas. Also, an edge of 60 or above will make the edges of each stamp transparent so when two stamps sit close together they don’t clash, instead there’s a smooth, unoticable transition between the two.

We finished the part of the leg infront of the hay, selecting a slighty different bit of the hay for our source each stamp and then did the foot just below that, using the grass as our source.

Five minutes should have you comfortable with the stamp tool. Remember whenever you make a mistake you can hold CTRL on the keyboard then press Z to undo your last action. Contiue this same process with the rest of the legs.

We’ve removed the legs and now we have a floating cow! In our image above we’ve hilighted where the legs were to show you how the area doesn’t look quite right yet. What’s happened is that we’ve duplicated our duplications and as such, the grass doesn’t look very natural. We can fix this though by sourcing random areas of the grass elsewhere and pasting it in the newly created background to make it look natural again. Try to use grass with a similar colour to the area you want to place, but to keep it random feel free to source areas further away from the new background area. Perfection isn’t necessary at this point because there’s still work to be done and we can come back at the end to touch up.

Now we have the bulky area (no offence mr cow!) to replace, we can make the stamp bigger - we’re going to use 15 and replace the cow with grass, all the way up to the horizon.

Now we’re getting there! It took just a few minutes to duplicate the grass enough to replace the entire body of the cow. We’re not fully happy with the “natural” look of the grass yet but we will perfect it once we’re done with the cow. Next we are going to edit the sky all the way down to the top of the tree lines. The tree lines are going to be the hardest part of the editing because we’re not sure what’s behind the cow. So let’s get the easy part done first and we’ll be able to envision the tree line a little better.

Again, we will use the stamp tool but because the sky doesn’t contain as many colours as the grass we can use a dragging motion with the rubber stamp. Select a source as usual and rather than just clicking the left mouse button to stamp the source, we can hold the mouse button down and drag. This will move the source as we move the stamp. We can then replace the cow with the sky faster than we did the grass, where the sky should look similar to the area around it. We don’t have to exclusively use the dragging method, it’ll speed up replacing large areas but we should still use the other method to keep the new sky looking original.

In our above image the cow has now been removed from the sky. It looks messy though! Let’s try a simple tool to fix it - the Blur Tool. Blurring does what it says on the tin. We can hold down the left mouse button and drag over the area we replaced to make it look smoother. We recommend using an intensity of about 50 for this. Imagine intensity as how hard your hand would be pushing on the canvas if you were painting this. Tidy up the sky and you can also experiment with the Smudge Tool which works exactly the same as the Blur Tool. In our picture we’re going to Blur the sky to smooth it out then lightly smudge over to finish it. Please note the more you go over the same area the intenser the effect will get, so don’t do it too much!

We’re almost done! The sky now looks smoother and seamless. We just need to make a new tree line where the black part of the cow remains. Zoom in to the area using either CTRL and + on the keyboard or the magnifying glass tool. The fact that the tree line is a very similar colour throughout is going to make this easier. The same as for the grass applies now, simply source areas of the tree line and stamp over the remaining bit of cow. Use a small stamp size again, we are using 8.

Again, we’ve removed the tree line using the stamp tool. We can now source parts of the tree line from further afield to add more detail in to our part. Also, the tree line looks blocky at the moment, we can duplicate parts of the sky and cut into the tree line so the shape becomes less solid looking, and the same goes for the bottom. We can use the grass to finish the meeting of the horizon and the tree line.

And there we have it, an empty field! Once your tree line is complete you can tidy the rest of the image using the above mentioned techniques. We touched up areas to make them look more natural and used the blur and smudge tools to make a few parts look more seamless.

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