From the course: Photo Tools Weekly
Quick fix of a background
From the course: Photo Tools Weekly
Quick fix of a background
- [Chris] Hello friends, this is Chris Orwig and welcome, to this week's episode of Photo Tools Weekly. In this one, we are in Photoshop and here I want to share with you a technique that you can use when you need to quickly retouch a large area in a photograph. And this is a technique that retouchers use all the time. We'll be working with this photograph here, you can see I captured it in New York, 'cause there is the Statue of Liberty in the background. And with this particular photograph, what I want to do is actually remove the Statue of Liberty and all of this. I want to have a more minimalist image, because I feel like the combination isn't really working here. So how the heck are we going to get rid of all of this content? Well one of the ways that we can do that is by first making a selection of some good content. So I'm just going to go ahead and make a quick selection of this area over here. And then I'll copy this to a new layer. To do that, we press Command + J on a Mac, Control + J on Windows. So step one is to select an area with good content, and copy it up to a new layer. Step two is to do some retouching on this. What I mean by that is here I have the clone stamp tool and I will Option or Alt click. And I'm just going to go ahead and paint away anything here that I find distracting. So I'm just sort of cleaning up what I have, making what I have just a little bit better. Tap the left bracket key to make the brush smaller. Now this isn't essential, and you don't have to do this every time. But it can kind of speed up your workflow a little bit. Sometimes if you feel like it's going to be a problem to have other things in the image, just clean it up, make it really nice. Next step. We need to change this, so it's on the other side of the image. How do we do that? Well if you press Command + T on a Mac, Control + T on Windows. That gives you access to free transform. Which you can see now. Then right click or control click inside of the free transform area and choose Flip Horizontal. Next step, go ahead and apply that. Enter or Return. Here with the move tool we can move this to the other side of the image, something maybe right around there. And obviously it's covering up too much of our subject for this photograph, but we can start to see, yeah, this might work. And those initial observations are really important when you're copying and pasting stuff from one area to another. Now of course, there's going to be some areas we need to fix up and some of the lights we'll want to change, but let's take a look at how we can progress through this project. So we have content above our background. Let's go ahead and name this one Skyline. Next step. We'll go to our background layer. Use a tool like the quick selection tool and make a selection of the subject, because we need to make sure that nothing happens to our subject there and that it just sort of comes into this area of the image. Now, we need the opposite of that, so we'll go to Select and Inverse. Next, we'll click on the eye icon for our Skyline layer. Click into that layer and add a layer mask. And basically what that does for us is it limits this new skyline to that area, so it's not affecting the subject. If there are any little problem areas, which sometimes happen, right? With selections. And I'm going to go in and just fix this up just a little bit. And just correct that right there, there's a little edge that needed fixing up, and that looks good like that. Okay, well now that we have that skyline in and we have retouched away that problem. Create a new layer, and with a clone stamp tool or with a healing brush any of those kind of tools, what we can do is just start to work on the edges, so if you notice there's a little edge issue, in some way we can clean that up, or if you feel like the lights are repeating themselves too specifically, what you want to do is just kind of change them. Sort of create the light pattern that you have here. Or modify in this case our skyline. So I'm just sort of changing it around a little bit. And the reason I'm doing that is I don't want it to be completely noticeable that each side is identical. So I'm going to go ahead and just modify that in a couple ways and add some other lights in a couple different ways, and that way it kind of blends in nicely. Alright, well there you have it. There is our quick tip in retouching away a pretty complicated situation, right? Or complicated content, without a ton of effort. And that is why retouchers use this type of a technique all the time, because they know, that if ever you can use something from the photograph and repurpose it in a new way, it often can lead to really strong results. Alright, well I hope that you found this one to be helpful. Thanks for joining me in this week's episode. I hope to see you in another one, have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.
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Contents
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Workflow strategy when shooting Raw + JPG3m 54s
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Quicker processing with review and camera calibration4m 15s
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Creating a concept layout with Lightroom and Photoshop8m 56s
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Fun layer project in Photoshop and Lightroom7m 43s
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Brush away unwanted objects in Lightroom CC5m 11s
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Using blur and type, part 14m 26s
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Using blur and type, part 26m 16s
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Better black and white workflow, part 19m 28s
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Better black and white workflow, part 24m 4s
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Action sports retouching, part 18m 57s
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Action sports retouching, part 26m 14s
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Face-Aware Liquify6m 59s
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Fixing teeth in a fashion photograph7m 51s
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Replace the sky in a drone photograph9m 6s
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Creating a great exposure from a single frame, part 15m 30s
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Creating a great exposure from a single frame, part 29m 29s
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Creating a luminous black-and-white portrait, part 14m 13s
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Creating a luminous black-and-white portrait, part 28m 8s
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Fixing overexposure with Camera Raw, part 15m 10s
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Fixing overexposure with Camera Raw, part 28m 52s
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Creative layer blending with Adobe Mix9m 58s
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Making a composite with Adobe Mix9m 35s
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Bring out detail in a landscape photograph, part 16m 20s
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Bring out detail in a landscape photograph, part 27m 51s
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Export a image from video footage9m 9s
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Finishing an iPhone photo11m 38s
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Combining the best expressions from two images5m 30s
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Celebrity portrait workflow in Lightroom: Part 15m 51s
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Celebrity portrait workflow in Lightroom: Part 26m 22s
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Creative layer blending project9m 14s
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Replacing a background and creating vivid colors6m 7s
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Jump for joy: Finishing a beach photo in Lightroom and Photoshop8m 57s
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Becoming an expert with masking in Photoshop6m 12s
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Advanced masking speed tips8m 29s
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Preparing a portrait for Instagram with Lightroom5m 25s
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Finishing a portrait with Photoshop7m 59s
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Using Lightroom to creating a stylized look that prints well5m 22s
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Cleaning up a creative portrait6m 37s
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Hacking Lightroom to create layouts for other projects6m 17s
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Using Content Aware Scale to add to the composition4m 25s
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Extending and filling in the background projects7m 27s
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How to create Gradient Tone Mapping color effects9m
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Creating more precise Gradient Map effects6m 47s
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Natural wrinkle reduction7m 10s
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Advanced wrinkle reduction12m 50s
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Tips for viewing and organizing your layers in Photoshop8m 11s
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Becoming an expert in layers in Photoshop5m 17s
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Using VSCO in Lightroom7m 27s
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Syncing adjustments in Lightroom7m 18s
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High-impact color with Camera Raw and Photoshop6m 57s
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Using Lightroom and Photoshop to create vivid color6m 1s
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Intro to better B&W with the Silver Effex Pro plugin5m 47s
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Taking a deeper dive into Silver Effex Pro10m 10s
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Creating a Panoramic Photo in Lightroom4m 47s
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Advanced Lightroom and Photoshop Pano Workflow6m 55s
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Opening raw files into Photoshop4m 13s
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Three ways to work with Camera Raw and Photoshop8m 14s
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Smart Filters: Using Smart Filters for creative options6m 53s
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Stacking up Smart Filter effects6m 2s
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Cleaning up and removing the background of an image8m 8s
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Two ways to add a new background8m
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Covering up problems in the frame7m 36s
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Removing a person and finishing a photograph9m 20s
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Photoshop Fix to Photoshop CC workflow11m 22s
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Add light to photos with Lightroom10m 56s
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Use Lightroom Collections to process color and black-and-white images6m 39s
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Skin smoothing with the Imogenic plugin Portraiture7m 27s
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Advanced Skin Smoothing Control with Portraiture9m 7s
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Accurate sharpening with Lightroom6m 4s
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Create Collections in Lightroom8m 12s
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Craft creative looks with the Alien Skin Exposure plugin in Lightroom10m 25s
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Use the Alien Skin Exposure plugin in Photoshop11m 32s
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Quick mobile retouching with Photoshop Fix7m 47s
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Add Lens Flare with more precise control9m 50s
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Two ways to crop in Photoshop and extend the canvas6m 9s
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A few methods for working with canvas size7m 45s
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Use plugins in Photoshop for special effects: Analog Efex Pro6m 57s
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Use plugins in Photoshop for special effects: Analog Efex Pro Advanced5m 41s
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Lightroom cropping shortcuts7m 59s
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Remove unwanted objects in Photoshop4m 30s
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Remove unwanted objects in Photoshop: Advanced5m 56s
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Use plugins in Photoshop for better results: Color Efex Pro11m 10s
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Preserve tones with the help of Lightroom clipping indicators6m 3s
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