How often do we take photographs that we love except for an object or person in the background that we wish we could get rid of! With most photo editing software it is fairly easy and simple for even learner photo editors to remove these objects. In this post I'm going to tell you how!

In this photograph you can see the patchy areas of grass and the boat oar are distracting items and have spoilt the image we were hoping to achieve. We need a way to remove them without making the image look fake and without over cropping.

This is one of the many times where the clone stamp tool comes in extremely useful. It allows us to take a sample from elsewhere in the photo and effectively paint over the unwanted areas. With this example we can take a sample from an area where the grass looks nice and green and use the clone stamp to reproduce that area to cover over the oar and the patchier areas of grass.

For this example I am using Photoshop Elements, the current version is Photoshop Elements 10 and can be purchased for around £50 for either a PC or Mac. 

To begin with open the photo you wish to edit in Photoshop Elements and save a copy of it with a different name to make sure your original image is safe while you learn to use this technique. This allows you to experiment as much as you like without worrying about destroying your original image:

Next select the clone stamp tool (by clicking on it) from the tool bar along the left side of the screen. Along the top you will now see options for the size and opacity of the clone stamp. Choose an appropriate brush size for the area you will be working on and keep the opacity set to 100%

You may find it helpful to zoom in slightly on your image to the area you will be working on at this stage, particularly if it is a small area you are going to be working on.
Choose the sample area you want to use to cover the unwanted items by hovering your mouse over the area and while holding down the 'alt' button on the keyboard click the left mouse button. 
Now simply click the mouse over the item you want to cover repeatedly until it is completely covered. You may want or need to re sample during this process so just press 'alt' and left click the mouse again to do this. 
Make sure you cover over any shadows the item may have created to give as natural a result as possible.

Once you are happy with the object removal you may wish to crop the image or resize depending on your requirements before saving it. 

Here you can see the before and after results of some quick object removal.

Why not have a go yourself? We'd love to see your results on our facebook page! https://www.facebook.com/photofairydesigns

This is the first in a series of Photoshop tutorials so please check back for more over the next few weeks!