How to remove power lines in Photoshop

Removing power lines in Photoshop is very easy.

Open the image

 Create a new black layer

Choose the Spot Healing Brush tool and be sure the Sample all layers is on

Make the brush a little bigger then  the power line.  Hit the beginning of the power line and with Shift selected hit the end of the power line to make it straight. If the line are not straight just go over the power lines to remove them. 

You also can do it on a copy of the background layer and in combination with the Clone tool (S).

Do it step for step and sometimes go back. 

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picture from pixabay

How to clean up your background

Sometimes you've got a great picture but the background is busy and takes away the focus from your subject. 

In that case you can use this tool in Photoshop to remove the unwanted 'objects' in the background.

I started with this picture:

 (from pixabay.com)

It's a nice picture of a running lady, but there is so much happening so much in the background that the focus in this image is not on the subject. In sports it's so much better (in most cases) to have a clean background.

So to remove the unwanted 'objects' in the background I used two tools:

1. Spot Healing Brush Tool (J): Paint over an area and Photoshop will try to repair this section.
2. Clone Stamp tool: Clone a piece and paint over the area you want to replace.

But you can also use:

1. Healing brush tool: Same as the Spot Healing Brush Tool, but you have to select a reference point.
2. Patch tool: Select an area and drag the selection over an area you want to generate a fill from.
3. Content aware fill: Select an area with your Lasso Tool and use Content Aware fill.

Here you can find all the details of the retouch and repair functionality in Photoshop.

I began with the person all the way on the right. I added a new (empty layer) and painted over it with the Spot Healing brush tool. It did a pretty good job, but to complete it, I used the Clone stamp to make the edges smoother.

Then I removed the people in the background the same way. I did it one more time with the people just behind the running lady. And there you have it, the intermediate result.

Next step is to remove the shadows behind the lady. Whilst I was at it, I also removed the building on the left side. And all with the Spot Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp Tool.

And this is my final result. A much cleaner image with full focus on the smiley running lady: 

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How to remove spots using in Lightroom

Sometimes when I edit a picture, I discover little or bigger spots on an image that don't belong there, like sensor dust. Luckily it's easy to remove these spots in Lightroom using using the Spot removal (Q).

When clicking on the Spot Removal tool you'll get 2 possibilities:- Clone- Heal

When you choose Clone, Lightroom will clone exactly to the pixel from a specific area. But when you choose Heal, Lightroom will attempt to make subtle changes to the way Spot is filled

With the size you can make your brush smaller of bigger, but it works faster by scrolling your mouse and make your brush bigger or smaller.

Feather is the way to make harder or softer edges to your brush strokes. Most of the time when you're doing spot removal, you'll use a feather of 100. This way you won't see the edges of your brush. Opacity is the strength of your brush. So when you use 50% opactiy your spot will disappear for 50%.

Let me show you how it works with this picture in Lightroom: 

Make your brush a little bit bigger then the spot and paint over it:

Lightroom tries to find an area to sample. You can drag it around to find a better area.  Then go to the next spot and repeat the same process. When all the spots are removed click on Ok and your image is clean.

When the spot removal tool is active you'll see 2 more options in the toolbar (T)- Tool Overlay- Visualize spots

With the Tool overlay you can choose if you want to see where you did your spot removal. With visualize spots the screen appears in black and white and you'll see the spots right away. 

 

So this is a really handy too to remove the spots: 

Most of the time I think Lightroom does a pretty good job with the spot removal. However, if you're not satisfied with the result, you can always resort to Photshop to fix the spots there. 

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