Removing Objects from Photos in Photoshop Elements 4.0

If you are like me, you have had some exciting photographic shots ruined by a distracting date stamp or background object. With the magic of Photoshop, you can now recover and repair those disappointing photos.

Begin with a digital photo or scan the photo you would like to repair. In this example, a one-of-a-kind photographic opportunity in Thailand was almost ruined by forgetting to turn off the camera's date stamp function.

Open your photo in Photoshop. I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 for photo correction tasks, although there are several other programs that can do these effects as well. Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 is an affordable user-friendly graphics editing program available for download at adobe.com.

Select the Clone Stamp tool about half-way down the tools palette. You can also select this stamp simply by typing the S key.

Once the Clone Stamp is selected, you will have several choices in the Options Bar above the photo.

Choose a soft-edge brush from the Brush dropdown menu. Using the default brushes, #65 is a good, fuzzy-edge circle suitable for this type of repair.

The size of the brush can be changed by typing in a number in the Size box or by using the pop-up slider in the Size box. Choose Mode: Normal and Opacity 100%.

Hold down the Alt key and click in an area just outside the object you wish to remove.

Position the Clone Stamp tool directly over the object you wish to remove and begin clicking several times. As you click, you will see that the tool is replacing the unwanted pixels in your photo with the new ones you have selected by Alt-clicking.

You may wish to zoom in close to the section you are repairing. To do this, use the Zoom tool (Z).

As you repair, you may need to "resample" the section of photo you wish to copy. Simply move to a new area and repeat the Alt-click function.

Continue "cloning" until the unwanted area is completely covered.

Here is my photo before cloning out the distracting date:

Here is the new and improved version of my photo. I continued cloning to remove the flag pole, water cooler, a piece of trash, a few scratches and a large piece of dust from the picture.

Using this same method with just a few clicks of the Cloning Stamp, you can remove tears, scratches, dust on the lens, ex-husbands, and a myriad of other distracting objects from your priceless photos.

Sara Horton, Scrapbook Instructor, Epson America