Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Hate Those Wires


Before



After

Ahhh yes, sunset from atop the old Intramuros wall - what a wonderful experience to share. Also, another photo op for would-be photographers. Sometimes, however, such a perfect scene could be punctuated by pesky power lines that should have never been there in the first place. If I were a better photographer, I could have found another angle or I could have searched for a better subject. But no, I was just some guy with a digital camera, on his way home, who happens to pass by this place at this moment. No time. I stopped for a few seconds, took out my camera, and click... not even the eagle-eyed snatchers noticed that I had a P23,000 piece of equipment stored in my tiny clutch bag.


I took a few simple steps to remove those wires using Adobe Photoshop. I used the 'Spot Healing Brush' (see pic below, hotkey is 'J') tool to let photoshop automatically predict the colors that I should 'brush' on to that area with the wires in order to erase tham. The Spot Healing tool will not work perfectly. Sometimes you need to manually do the task. To do this, select the eyedropper tool (Hotkey is I) and select a pixel near the object to be erased. You just selected a color. With that color, use the brush tool (hotkey B) to paint over the unwanted objects (eg, pimples, power lines). Be sure to use low opacity and/or flow so that your corrections will simply blend on to the background.


Here's another Mapua scene, off topic. This one was not edited in any way. It's a bit grainy though. I find it hard to hold the camera steady for long exposure times. I need a monopad? Hehe.

2 comments:

Photowalker said...

I can relate to your wire problem.

I went to Maestranza Park to shoot the sunset once and came home with sunset pictures ruin by those wires.

SeƱor Enrique said...

I have got to get Photoshop even if for removing ugly stuff like wires and cables from my pictures. Ganda nga ng difference, Ean.