Cleaning Up Large Areas

In a tutorial I was watching, the narrator showed us the following photo and mentioned how he was disappointed with the photo he had taken because he forgot to make sure his shadow didn't appear in the photo.  If you take a look at the right hand side of the photo, you will notice that his shadow casts over the fence and is completely noticeable.  While this lesson was a bit intimidating at first, I decided to tackle the very same thing and found it to be extremely useful.

There were quite a few steps involved but the practice was well appreciated!  After opening the photo up, I created a new layer and named this one 'cleanup".  I then selected the lasso tool as I have in a previous post but chose the polygonal lasso instead - selecting a portion of fence without shadow being sure to include some area above and below the fence.  (Don't worry, we can adjust it later.)  

You will then click the background layer to make it active, then select layer, new, layer via copy (or ctlr J).  Rename this layer Fence 1 and then select the move arrow from your toolbox on the left and move this area of fence on top of the shadowed area you want to correct.  I found I needed to repeat this step a few times so it is not an issue if you don't cover the entire affected area.  

Once you have moved it, you will not need to re-size it so it blends as nicely as possible.  You do this by clicking Ctlr T and you will see a box appear around the area of fence you have moved.  Now holding down the shift key, re-size the image.  To rotate the image click outside of the box, click and drag into position.  When you are satisfied, click press enter.  

You will now add a mask layer.  This will enable you to fill this area in with the newly replaced fence.  On the layer toolbox, hold down the alt key and press the square with the circle in the middle (which will show the text "add vector mask" when hovering over it.    You will notice a black box will appear next to the original layer. 

You will now choose the brush icon while pressing D once.  You brush hardness should be raised to about 60%, your blend should be set to normal and your opacity to 100%.  Now you will notice a circle appear as your brush.  Decrease and increase the size of the brush using the [ or ] keys.  (The smaller the brush the more precise you can paint.)  Zoom in and begin to paint over the fence you moved into place being careful not to brush past the actual fence area.  

After the first try

After the second correction

After further correcting the bottom rail

Though we did not correct all of the shadows, you will notice that you cannot tell that they are indeed the shadow of a person.