Removing items from images with Corel or Photoshop

December 1, 2008 by Lee Hammaker

 Here’s a short tutorial on how to get rid of pesky objects you found in your favorite photos:

When I speak or write about certain tools with-in Corel most of the time Adobe Photoshop and Elements will have them too. This is how to remove a small red leash from the accompanying photo I shot years ago. The leash is barley visible but noticeable as it grows out of the middle of the dogs back.

After scanning the photo or dumping the digital photo into my computer I opened Corel and loaded the photo into the program itself. The first thing I did was create a new layer, Corel uses ‘objects’ instead of layers, but I had Corel configured to Adobe Photoshop, strange I know, since I didn’t originally like Photoshop.

Anyway, after creating a new layer I clicked on a tool called the clone tool. It’s a nifty tool to use that takes a picture of the surrounding pixels in an image in the shape of the brush nib and places the ‘cloned’ images where you want them.

When you first see the clone tool working it looks like the nib shape with crosshairs inside flashing at you. You then right click what pixels to be cloned then place the empty nib shape where you want the pixels to appear at.

The reason for creating a new layer is that it’s easer to delete the layer in case you make a mistake, instead of doing the undo tango on your computer.

After passing over the section you want disappeared you need to blend the layer in better so it doesn’t look like you simply pasted a section of the pixels over the section. Also it’s easy to create a weird repeating pattern with clone tool. You just have to be careful and patient with it.

This is just one way of getting rid of unwanted elements in your photo, you can ‘paint’ the same section of pixels with a tool called mask then do a new layer/copy layer from highlight and then paste the section over the area you want gone. You just have to blend the section in better.

It just seems easier for me to work with the clone tool is all.

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Lee Hammaker has a passion for graphic arts and has been involved in computer graphics for over 15 years. Although he does it mostly for personal satisfaction he does contract out to businesses and organizations through GoFreelance. He has a new website where he is selling some of his unique designs on clothing at Half Infinity Productions. His artwork has appeared on various websites.