picket fence

[aprilmaynot]

Hi all, I am new to this forum and can I say how happy I am to have stumbled onto it. I am new to Photoshop and to photo editing, but it now consumes my days and nights.
How happy I was this morning to receive a request via email asking me to alter a photo , they want cars removed, and the colour of the bricks to be grey. I have had a great time learning to do this UNTIL the picket fence...... I need some help to do this. I have tried and tried and tried, am worn out now. I will post a before I started pic here, and an after I started pic in another post. I used clone but it is far to hard to get a good result.
Thanks for your help.

[aprilmaynot]

before pic

here is the before I started photo.

[aprilmaynot]

After photo

This is my work so far it is by no means compleated I am just at the stage of eliminating......

[T Paul]

First off welcome to the forum!

Wow that’s going to be a lot of editing work. First off I would suggest if the place of business is nearby, go on a day when no one is there and retake the photo with no cars. That would cut down you retouching time by a lot. Then all you have to do is worry about the fence and changing the color of the bricks. Ahh, I see as I write this you have posted the after photo. Excellent work in removing the cars!

For the fence, are you trying to remove it or add to it? If you are removing it, you need to find out what they want in its place. An easy solution would be to fill in the area with landscape such as trees and shrubs or flowers. You could take a photo with the landscaping you like and cut and paste it to cover the white picket fence area.

Best of luck and so far it is looking very good.


~T

[Toad]

Hmmm. I have done a huge pile of this type of editing in my Photoshop career - not that I am a professional - just a seriously obsessed amateur.

First of all - nice effort to start - good preliminary work.

Here's one thing you need to work on - the bottom frames of the door and windows. They are off kilter - this is because they are straight on - paralell with the bottom photo edge - this is not right - look at the top pf the frames - the bottom edges should be skewed upwards and right. Look at the frame on the left most window for what I mean.

You have done a good job of faking the bottom sills - but they are not perspective correct. Here is what you do.

In PhotoShop use the polygonal lasoo to select the bottom bit of the door or window - maybe one sixth of the height of the door - select the "transform" option from the menu and select "skew". Grab the bottom right corner and drag it upwards just a hair until the bottom line of the sill lines up with the top. Apply the transform. Then clone in the white bit left behind (I can see that you know how to clone very well). It will be much more natural.

The other thing to do is clean up the bottom left of the picket fence - select the largest brush with a non-fuzzy edge in clone and slide along the bottom to clean it up. It looks too fuzzy and un-natural now.

I am attaching a stupidly rapid hack to show what I mean by these two changes. I have made no effort to make it look good - this is just an illustration to show you what I mean.

As I say - I have done hundreds of these fakeouts - if you need any advice - post a request or PM me.

Best
Toad

P.S. get rid of the power line too.

[Flora]

Hi Aprilmaynot,

Very good start in what is going to be a looong job!

You got a very good tip from T Paul in case you decide to remove the picket fence ....

A vital one about perspective and how to get it right from Toad (I'll be surely knocking on his door for advice!!!)

My tip is about adding to (rebuilding) the picket fence .... Mind you, like Toad

..not that I am a professional - just a seriously obsessed amateur....

....

Beside removing the green-yellow cast, I didn't do any retouching other than rebuild the picket fence....
I used the Layer Via Copy technique ... meaning:

1) Loosely select a good part of the fence and CTRL+J copy it onto its own Layer.

2) With the newly created Layer active, press 'V' to move it around until you cover part of the car with it.

3) I used the Free Tranform Tool (CTRL+T) to stretch it a bit lenghtwise careful to not overdo it.

4) I duplicated the 'stretched' Layer and moved it to cover the car more ....

Repeat Step 4 as many times as necessary. You might play with the Layer Order (Bring Forward or Send Backward) as to blend the Layers better together.

5) Clean the new picket fence using the Clone Tool

6) When finished rebuilding the fence and after having merged its Layers together, Use the Edit->Transform->Perspective Tool to adjust the Perspective.

[Toad]

Very nice work on the fence, Bella.

You make me sorry that I did not take more time to do the fence correctly.

Best
Toad

[aprilmaynot]

Thank you

Thank you all for you help. The fence looks great and I have done as sugested. But I am going to start all over again as I did not use layers... as I said I am new at this and will learn by my mistakes!
Another problem I had was I have to change the colour of the bricks and when I did this I lost perspective again as the front awning does not stand out I think this is a shading problem and as I am no artist I am struggling with this. also is there a way to get straight edges as I can't keep edges straight when I clone.

[aprilmaynot]

Grey brick

This is the grey brick I have to use.

[Flora]

Toad,

Thanks!

Aprilmaynot,

I'm not sure this is what you want to achieve ... but here is what I did:

1) Selected the white wall to be changed and (CTRL+J) copied it onto its own Layer.

2) Completely desaturated it (CTRL+Shift+U) ... that turned it already to a greyish colour.

3) Created a new empty Layer on top of it.

4) Used the rectangular Marquee to select a rectangle (nearly as wide as the wall, but just over the half high)

5) Filled the rectangle with a dull grey colour and chose Filter->Texture->Texturizer->Brick .... keeping the default settings.

6) Decreased the Layer Opacity so I could see the underlying wall and used the Transform Tool (Perspective, Distort and Free Transform) on the grey brick rectangle to adapt it to the wall. Set the Opacity back to 100%.

7) Changed the Layer Blending to 'Darken'.

You can play with other Blending styles, you can adjust Brightness&Contrast or experiment with Levels or Curves until you are satisfied.

[Flora]

....As for Cloning, Painting, Airbrushing etc. , I always do it on a newly created empty Layer(**) on top of the one with the image I want to fix.

In this way, I can always change, correct or erase if not satisfied or if I make an error ...

To Clone, Paint etc. in a straight line just click on the Start point and keeping the 'Shift' key pressed, click on the End point ... You'll have a perfectly straight line from Start to End!

(**) Just make sure you have the "Use All Layers" box checked!!!

[Doug Nelson]

Another thing to consider that might help with matching areas to patch is straightening the perspective. This is a common procedure for real estate photos. I used the measure tool along the left vertical building edge and then Image>Rotate Canvas>Arbitrary to rotate it to true vertical (it automatically plugs in the correct number). Then I used the crop tool set to Perspective to align the left and right vertical edges of the building (horizontal wouldn't look right fixed this way). I then dragged the edges of the crop border out beyond the actual image area to make sure I didn't lose any data.

[Flora]

Doug,

Thanks for the tips!!!!

Got to try it.... I hate working on 'crooked' images, but sometimes I struggle a lot trying to straighten them!!!

[aprilmaynot]

WOw

Thank you both again.
I have to return my grandchildren to their rightfull owners so will be out of town for 2 days. I so want to work on my photo but will have to wait untill I return.
I am so gratefull for this site otherwise my learning would be at snail pace. Thanks again.