In this tutorial I will show you how to “erase” or clone out the people from this Japanese Garden photo.

japanese garden

The first part of the tutorial I created a new layer and sketch what I think should go behind the people I wanted to erase. Its always a good idea to sketch the background out when there is a good amount of details.

The second part I use the marquee tool to select the upper part of the door and pasted down, than use a soft eraser to blend it in. You can use this to help you align the doors by moving the copied layer around until it fits.

Next I used a solid color for the small area on the bottom next to the door. When the area is small it’s ok to use a solid color but don’t over do it or it will look fake.

Finally I use the clone stamp to finish the rest of the image, when you first activate the clone stamp you will need to “sample” an area on your photo by holding the Alt key and clicking on a area that you want to clone, than you start painting over the area that needs to be covered.

This is a video of me sketching a random portrait in photoshop using a wacom tablet, I’ve included the video and also some screen shoots.

Here is the video of the sketching process, you can read below for details.

I start with a grayish background for mid tone and just start sketching the shape of the face.

I didn’t really sketch everything in detail because I will leave that for later, but for now I blocked in some of the shadow areas to make the shape more three dimensional.

Next I blocked in some highlights and the basic shape of the hair. At this point I have a better view of what the final picture will look like, so it is good to start make some major changes before its too late such as the shape of the head, position of the eyes and so on.

Than I added some streaks of hair to show the direction of the hair flow.

After you are done blocking in the basic shapes and final positioning of the facial features you can start defining the detail on the face.

In the final picture I brighten up the drawing and even out the tone and added fine streaks of hair.

The clone tool is useful for cloning one part of a photo to another to create the illusion of continuity. With some patient and creativity you can remove anything from your photo. Here is a image of a beach scene where the people are completely erase/removed.

Check out my tutorial on the clone stamp if you are not familiar with the basics.

The clone tool can be found on the tool bar, it looks like a stamp, you can also activate it by pressing “S”

You will need to tell photoshop where you want to clone by holding Alt while clicking on the area.

I started by cloning person in the middle, that is the easiest part because there are less objects behind him. Pay extra attention to where the sand and the rock meets.

- Clone the rock from a different rock to fill the gap.

- Moving on the the harder part, to remove object that is blocking a lot of things, I create a new layer and outline over what I think it should look like. Than using the same technique as before, I sample an area that looks similar and clone over it.

- When you are stuck- You might not always find the right area to clone so you will have to paint it in such as the crashing wave.  I used a scattered pattern brush and use the eye-drop tool to sample the color of the crashing wave. Than I dabbed in the effect. (Learn more about painting with Brush in this tutorial)

- You can also use marquee tool to copy some of the elements and past them to another part of the photo, it gives you better control over the shape of the object like the rocks on the sand and the reflection cast by the rock.

The rest of the video is pretty much the same, by using brush, copy and pasting and guide lines, you will have a easier time erasing objects in a photo. I hope I didn’t miss anything, please post it in my comment if you like to know more about this video.

Have you tried this tutorial out yourself? Feel free to share your before and after photo with us!

This is part of my tutorial set. Please visit the TUTORIAL PAGE for a list of all the tutorials.