Recently local artist Tom Coley asked me to help him with a postcard he was creating for his Peace Memorial (a statue outside the Council chambers in Katoomba). Tom had some beautiful photos of the Peace Memorial taken by a friend and fellow artist, but it had begun to rain as the photos were being taken and so the statue is flecked with raindrops.
Because we were using the image in quite a small size it didn’t have to be a perfect job, just removing the most obvious/largest drops. See the before and after below:
Photo by Ian Swift
Method/Tools used:
- I selected all the major raindrops in the lighter stone area using the Magic Wand tool (a tolerance of about 10 and Contiguous turned on)
- After most of the major raindrops were selected, I widened the selection area (Select -> Modify -> Expand) by about 3px to make sure I had the edges of the drops
- Fill -> Content Aware, and wait about a million years for my poor old computer to process …
- Repeat the same process on the darker area of the stone
- Use the Spot Healing Brush Tool to catch the rest of the most visible raindrops
You might notice the woman’s knees are still pretty rain-y – I spent less time on these as they were cut out of the final print project.