Project 2. Ex, As in Gone, or Now You See 'Em, Now You Don't  These days it seems as if people are having a harder time staying together. It's as if one couple or the next is getting a divorce or splitting up. At least that's the idea you get if you watch too much television, the way I do. A couple who have been together for quite some time graciously agreed to pose for this project. This project demonstrates how you can make someone disappear completely from a photograph as though they were never there at all. In fact, if you blink during the process, you'll miss it and believe that there was real magic involved. Here goes: 1. | Open a photo that contains a person or object you want removed. You can see the photo I'll be working with in Figure 1.7. If you don't have a similar photo to work with, you can download the one (Mike and Jo.tif) I'm working with from the companion website.
Figure 1.7. Here are our volunteers. 
What I'll attempt to do here is remove the woman from the photograph, leaving the man alone. Of course, the idea is to make it look as if the woman was never there at all. Otherwise, we could just print the image and tear it down the middle.
| 2. | Select the Freehand Selection tool and set the Selection Type to Point to Point. You can use the Freehand Selection tool to make polygonal selections with the Point to Point setting. In a photo like this one, you need to make a selection along the hedges and also around the top part of the woman (see Figure 1.8).
Figure 1.8. Start with the Point to Point Freehand Selection. 
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Painting Within the Lines With the selection created, it's time to "paint" out that part of the woman and the chair. Be sure to watch for shadows and parts of things like shirtsleeves, chair rails, and handles. Note I've been using a mouse for a long time, and I don't usually use hotkeys. In fact, if there's a way to grab or set something from a palette, I usually take that route because I find it quicker than, say, using a menu. That said, there's always a number of ways to accomplish any task in Paint Shop Pro. For example, you can also add a new layer via the Layers menu. Eventually, you'll develop habits that work for you and that allow you to work quickly and effortlessly.
I created the selection because it will now be possible to paint out everything in that selection without touching any other areas of the image. I told you it was magic! 3. | Create a new raster layer by clicking the small icon in the upper-left corner of the Layers palette.
| 4. | Select the Clone Brush. If you're unfamiliar with how the Clone Brush works, turn to Appendix B for some extra help.
Set the Brush Size fairly large to make quick work of it. Make sure you turn on Aligned Mode and Use All Layers.
| 5. | Right-click somewhere in the hedges to the right of the woman to set the Clone Brush's starting point. Then click and drag over the selected area to paint the hedges over the woman (see Figure 1.9). Be sure you cover all of the woman and chair that is in the selected area.
Figure 1.9. Cloning out part of the woman. 
| 6. | Choose Selections, Select None. Set the Selection Type to Freehand and draw around the lower part of the woman. You might need to try a couple of times. You can also remove and add to the selected area by holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys, respectively, or setting the Mode.
Again, make sure you get all of the areas you want to remove, but none of those you don't want to remove (see Figure 1.10).
Figure 1.10. Another selection. 
| 7. | Use the Clone Brush to paint out the lower part of the woman, using some of the lawn.
| 8. | When you're done painting with the Clone Brush, choose Selections, Select None to turn off the selection.
| 9. | Use the Clone Brush to touch up any areas that need it. I found the line between the hedges and the lawn to be too prefect from the point-to-point selection, so I cloned along the hedges using Freehand to make it appear a little more natural.
The resulting image is shown in Figure 1.11.
Figure 1.11. Have you seen this man's wife? She seems to have disappeared. 
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Crop to Center the Subject Now that the woman has been removed from the picture (is that a pun?), it looks a little off-center. A final step should take care of that. 10. | Select the Crop tool and use it to crop the image so it has a better composition. To do so, simply click and drag in the image to define the area you want to crop to. Before committing the change, which is always undoable, you can resize the area and move it around until you're happy with the crop. You can see the crop I'm going to use in Figure 1.12.
Figure 1.12. A better crop. 
Note This technique can be used for many things, from wrinkles to ex-spouses. We'll make good use of selections and cloning throughout this book. As my mom always says, "Practice makes perfect." |
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