Remove Tool and Grain

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 21, 2023
2 replies
3732 views

I'm currently working on photos with an unfocused background and a good amount of noise/grain. When I use the Remove Tool for clean-ups in these areas, the results are weird. The grain that Photoshop decides to put in there has pattern to it that does not match at all with the grain of the image. The workaround I've been using is to run a Field Blur to wipe the bad grain a bit and adding matching grain in the bottom options of the filter.

Is there anything in the works to improve the Remove Tool's performance to addess this?

Photoshop v25.0.0, Mac OS 13.5.1

macOS

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JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Try the Patch Tool. That tool allows you to select an area as source that has the same kind of structure, so also grain.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

The Remove tool is amazing when used in the right area, but IME it is far from a one Tool to Rule Them All. As soon as you mentioned replicating grain in another part of the image, I immediately thought of the Content Aware Fill tool, and specifically the one in the Edit menu. You can actually tell Photoshop where to source the fill material from. I'm guessing that you have used CAF already?

D

davenadeauAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks for the response.

I have used the Content Aware Fill for larger areas with good results. This area I'm working on is a spotty mirror with unfocused brick in the reflection. CAF isn't time-effective for that. It works out better to use the Remove tool to clean up quickly, followed by Field Blur Grain as I mentioned after completing a good chunk.
I totally recognize that the Remove isn't a panecea, however, the way it's replacing grain is something I hope Adobe will improve upon.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Dave, we are always reduced to making our best guess with limited information. Now you have mentioned the mirror I'm thinking that I probably wouldn't try to fix it, but instead, simply composite a patch over the selected mirror. What I often do in these situations, rather than use an unlinked mask on a new layer, I fill the selection with black making it a template, and clip the patch to the template. This lets me shape the patch using whatever method, but often as not, FT > Warp.

This is usually only useful where the initial selection can be made with a clipping path, because it is easy to edit the path and hit the Fill Path icon at the bottom of the paths panel. With analogue selections (i.e. with some feathering) the unlinked layer mask is usually the right approach.

But please think about using patches instead of random fills or even using the Clone tool. It gives you full control of the pixels that will be used, and lets you shape them for best effect. In fact, come to think of it, I rarely use the clone tool.

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