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Question

how come when i remove an object with content aware it brings in unselected part of the picture to fill with?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 17, 2017
4 replies
6533 views

I am trying to remove an object in the background of a picture, and have watched tutorials saying to use the lasso tool the the content aware fill, but when I try this it fills it with blurry parts of people from below the object despite the lasso'd area not touching the people in the picture. Is there a different way that I cant find of removing an object that is touching different coloured parts of the background? Thanks

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victoriah80830523Author

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Thanks for all the advice and help everyone :-) And that's good Dave I thought I was been even stupider than normal haha but if that step wasn't needed that's good, but yeah I can try it next time now I know!

Trevor your wall corner looks a lot better than mine! I didnt think it looked too bad until I saw yours Rectangular marquee sounds easier than my rubbish attempts with the clone stamp... but I will check out the tutorials, ive been scared of photoshop for a while and been sticking to lightroom for just general tweaking but now i am quite excited about photoshop and its opened lots of new things to do with photos!

just out of interest how long did it take you both roughly to come up with your finished photos?

davescm

Community Expert

just out of interest how long did it take you both roughly to come up with your finished photos?

Just a few minutes. The more you do this, and get used to the tools, the quicker you get

Dave

victoriah80830523Author

Participating Frequently

a few minutes! thats pretty good

victoriah80830523Author

Participating Frequently

Here is the photo, it is the tv I am trying to remove (its for a friend who wanted to frame it for someone so its not really necessary as its still a nice photo but they would prefer it without and I wanted to try and improve my editing skills, ive not done object removal before)

So with the content aware at first it replaced it with some smeary hair and randomly an eyeball, and by creating another layer for the fill it blended the top of the cards into where we would like wall to be which makes sense if it uses its surroundings to fill it, thats why I was wondering if I was going about it the wrong way?

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

My approach in this situation is the same as when making composited. Select and copy the foreground elements I want to keep, to a new layer, and place above the fixed area. That ensures no issues where the fix butts up to the background as the fix continues under the copied foreground pixels. It _always_ makes a better job of it.

This image was particularly easy to fix because the background was so plain, and had two perfect verticals we could use (the inside and outside corners of the walls). So after making a copy of the top of the girl's heads and the seat cushions, and moving that to the top of the stack, it was a simple matter of making a rectangular marquee selection of first the darker wall area, and running a gradient across it, and then the same with area to the right of it.

To get a good match you select each end of the area you are going to fill, and copy the colours with foreground and background colours, and run your gradient. A tiny bit of grain gives it texture.

I strongly believe that Photoshop users should try to learn how to create content from scratch purely with Photoshop's tools. It is often easier than you think, and it is a powerful tool to have available. Steve Caplin's '100% Photoshop' is the best book on the subject I know of. But Bert Monroy's tutorials on Illustration of Lynda.com cover heaps more ground.

davescm

Community Expert

Your last sentence Dave, is why I always like to use the Martin Evening tutorial for the old Refine Edge in forum replies. This comes from the days of CS5, but is still relevant seeing as we know how to recall Refine Edge for layer masks.

I wonder how complex Decontaminate Colors is? I routinely use it, but mainly because it forces a new layer with layer mask, which is the obvious starting point if any fine tuning is needed, but I'm guessing Decontaminate Colors targets color(s) sampled from the edge pixels, but does it do this with a single colour range, or multiple (as in totally desaturate the edge pixels)? We know that so many Photoshop features use scripts to cobble together other (older) features, so I envisage colour range or hue/saturation coming into it. I like to use Hue/sat because it nearly always works better if you can edit both tonal value as well as hue/saturation, so that Lightness slider can make a big difference.

Yes - still a relevant tutorial even using Select and Mask.

The main difference I find with refine edge in Select and Mask is that I use a smaller brush with a hard edge and smart radius off

Unfortunately - with no slider control, the Decontaminate Colors in S&M should be relabelled as - "mess up the mask". That is not really a complaint as using a color blend clipping mask works much better in that it allows you to choose the colours that fit your subject and background. I also do the same with luminosity on the edge if going from a very light to a very dark background. Maybe we should ask for a tool in select and mask that allows you to output "New Layer with Mask + additional clipping color blend layer "

Dave

martinl78027992

Participating Frequently

Create a mask for your original photo. Mask out any areas you do not want content aware fill to sample from. Highlight the orginal photo, create the selection and use content aware fill. Only unmasked areas will be sampled from

davescm

Community Expert

Copy the section of the image that you want content aware to use when filling, onto a separate layer then make your selection round the object and use content aware fill on that separate layer.

Dave

victoriah80830523Author

Participating Frequently

hi, thanks for the reply, i tried that which has solved the bringing random parts of picture in but as it has some cards under the tv (which is what im trying to remove) it just smears the cards into the space i am trying to get blank wall, i take it this method only works with similar coloured backgrounds/?

davescm

Community Expert

Hi

It is hard to tell you the best method without seeing the image. Sometimes cloning works better, sometimes healing, sometimes content aware.

Are you able to post the image stating what you are trying to remove/replace and we'll and help you with a method for that image?

Dave

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