Random thoughts on art, technology, stuff, and occasionally Real Estate: Photoshop: Removing A Vechicle With The Clone Stamp

Vehicles just plain don't belong in real estate photos.  There are several ways to remove a vehicle.  Please keep in mind that Photoshop should be the Method Of Last Resort.

Method Number One:  "Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you, but do you suppose you could move your car for a few minutes, please?  I need to take some marketing photos of this home.  Thank you, I really appreciate it."

Method Number Two:  "Would you hurry up and move that G** D*** F****** Piece Of S***, Now!!!"

Method Number Three:  Shoot from an angle where the vehicle is not visible.  Walk up and down the sidewalk, try several different views.  Stand near the driver's side door and shoot over the car.

Method Number Four:  When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  Climb on top of the hood of the car and shoot down on the property from that vantage point.  You might find this is a very appealing angle.

Method Of Last Resort:  Photoshop.

I borrowed this particular image from Athol Kay's Bad MLS Photo of the Day

I'm using Photoshop Elements 5 for this demo.   First step:  Look at the image and decide if you can crop a portion of the offending vehicle out.  The more you can crop out, the less you have to clone.  I think I can get away with cropping out the bottom portion of the street.  A little at each side will have to go, too, to try to maintain a normal balance.

Click on the crop tool.

This looks about right to me.  Hit Enter, to finish the crop.

I want to Zoom In a little bit to do the cloning.  Hit View -> Zoom In.

Click on the Clone Stamp Tool.

To start with, I selected a large, fuzzy brush.....

With a fairly large pixel diameter.

Hold down the ALT key and click somewhere in the driveway.  Release the ALT key, click somewhere on the car, and drag.  Keep repeating.  ALT-click in the driveway, click on the car, and drag.

Move to the left side.  Hold down the ALT key and click somewhere in the gravel.  Release the ALT key, click somewhere on the car, and drag.  Keep repeating.  ALT-click in the gravel, click on the car, and drag.  Experiment with dragging in different directions.  Keep repeating until the car is fully covered. 

I cheated.  I brought the driveway and the gravel all the way down to the foreground to avoid having to deal with the sidewalk and curb.

Change to a smaller brush, and a smaller pixel diameter to work on the garage door and the entryway.

Remember that the Undo History palette is your friend.  If you accidentally cloned over the wrong area, and need to back up a few steps, hit View -> Undo History.  Each click is recorded in the History list, the most recent at the bottom of the list.  Scroll to the bottom, then click the last few items to Undo them.

OK.  Good enough.  Now I want to fix the other issue, the home is tilting a bit towards the right.  Hit Select -> All.

Hit Image -> Transform -> Free Transform  (In full version Photoshop this is under Edit -> Free Transform)

Move the cursor to an area just outside of the lower right corner of the image.  The cursor will change into a tiny curved arrow with points at each end.  Drag slowly upward until the horizontal lines appears straight.  When you are satisfied, hit Enter to finish.

Now, you'll want to re-crop just slightly to remove the white space created by the Free Transform.

Zoom back out to normal size by hitting View -> Zoom Out.

You might want to Sharpen just slight.  Hit Enhance -> Adjust Sharpness  (In full version Photoshop this is under Filter -> Sharpen)

Adjust the sharpness controls to your liking.

Would this final image work for a high grade color flyer or print ad?  No, the imperfections from the cloning process would be noticeable.  Would it work for MLS or website photos?  Yes.

With a little practice, you'll find you can clone objects out of an image fairly quickly.  Next up, I'll demo removing an object with the lasso tool.