How to remove this

[tomc001]

I usually use cloning to remove unwanted things from images. But it is sometimes a struggle because there is no good place to clone from that matches.

This excerpt shows an example I'm working on. I want to remove the out of focus door frame in the background. I can't get good results with cloning.

There are probably several really neat ways to do this that I haven't thought of. What can the experts here suggest?

Thanks,

Tom

[MikeG]

Tom,

I'm far from expert, but perhaps experimenting with the Speck Removal tool would be worthwhile. Fairly large radius say two or three times the width of the light strip, and high transparency and softness.

Mike.

[jsachs]

Here's a somewhat unorthodox approach...

Crop out a some of the uniform background you want to use to cover the door frame. Try to find a part that does not vary much in brightness.

Use the Special Effects/Tile transformation, repeating it enough times vertically and horizontally, perhaps with reflection to minimize discontinuities at the edges, until the result image is larger than the image you want to retouch.

After clicking OK, crop this replicated background image to be exactly the same size as the original.

You may want to do a little cloning to reduce and patterning in the result image.

Finally use 1:1 cloning to copy the replicated background over the door frame.

[den]

Another possibility... but may depend upon the details not shown in the posted image portion...

(1) the starting image.
(2) add Gaussian Blur sufficent to obscure detail yet provide background lighting gradients
(3) add 7 to 10% Gaussian HSV-V noise to the resulting (2) image
(4) create a main subject mask using (1) as the source
(5) Composite-HighPass Filter with an inverted mask [black=100, white=0] where (1) is the Input and (2,3) is the Overlay. Overlay Amount=100 and HighPass filter Blur=20
(6) alternately 1:1 Clone from either (1) or (2,3) to refine main subject edge detail [fine hair strands, for example] and any background detail to be retained.

Image1-1.jpg (28.39 KiB) Viewed 5712 times

[den]

Add'l Comments...

Experimenting with a full sized image [3456x2304 pixels], the step(5) Composite-HighPass operation may not obscure the background sufficiently... but a near 100% Composite-Blend operation certainly will...

Blur radius selections probably should be scaled as well...

[tomc001]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I know from past experience that speck removal looks awful when set for large pixel sizes.

While you can't really see it from the small excerpt, the original image has a texture that the scanner picked up from the original. Techniques that use blurring lose that and stand out from the rest of the image as a result. But this approach could prove very useful with other images.

Jonathon's suggestion to grab a bit and tile/reflect it until I have enough to clone in a new background looks to be a hit. A quick try gave better results than anything I was able to do before. It maintains the texture from the original print and matches the color and brightness quite well.

I cropped out a vertical strip just to the left of the door frame and then reflected it to the right. So when I cloned from that starting about the same place as the left of the crop, the result matched quite well on the left.

For some reason I hit an Out Of Memory error all too often with this image. It is 2700x3800 pixels (48bit). Every time I get the error, PWP 5 locks up and I lose my work. A 64 bit version of PWP can't come soon enough for me.

Again thanks for the suggestions. I now have new tools and ideas to work with in the future. I'm a volunteer with my county's historical society and do all of the scanning and editing for the photo archives department using an Epson V700 scanner and PWP5.


Tom

[den]

RE: ...Out of Memory occurs when performing 48-bit depth, large image area 1:1 or Linked Cloning...

I will frequently close, then re-open the Clone Tool with un-needed image versions and masks, closed or deleted from PWP's working space.

Sometimes for critical work, I will open the Window's Task Manager Performance Tab and monitor memory usage to determine when a Clone Tool close-open sequence is needed... ...and I will save a partially completed image version [ *_tmp.tif ], frequently updating it with partial successive preference edits as I go a long.

Also when using PWP's Tools/Brushes rather than transforms, it is better that the starting image for successive edits is a 'copy' of the Original, rather than the Original itself... and often find that Stamping [multiple clicks] rather than Painting [click-hold-drag-release] with an 'as needed' radius, 50-90% transparent, 90% soft-sided brush; letting the effect build to a preference; works best.

[Robert Schleif]

This is a situation where it would really be convenient if the blur transformation could be directed not to sample a masked area.
See http://www.dl-c.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=295 for an earlier discussion of blurring and masking.