Man with dog.jpg

              AFTER AND BEFORE            

 

Step # 1

In order to erase the man from the photo, the clone/stamp tool will again be used. The stamp tool will be used to both erase the man from the picture and to expand the landscape of the trees, stream and snow where the man once blocked the view.

Step # 2 (After 10 minutes)

The first area of the photo that I decided to crop out was the man's legs, which covers the area between the stream and the dog. This area was the easiest medium to work around because I was simply expanding the area of snow. Snow was an easy terrain because the color and texture is uniform throughout and because it is virtually impossible to recognize repetition of the same pixels that create the layer due to the fact that the color is white.  

Step #3 (After 10 minutes)

After cropping out the man's legs from the photo, I started to work with erasing the man's left arm and shirt sleeve which had covered my view of both the trees and snow on the other side of the stream, as well as part of the stream. This area of the photo was slightly more difficult than the first area that I worked with because of the variations of different colors and textures used. Although not the most difficult part of the photo, the stream that runs across the photo was a challenge to expand where the man's sleeve covered because it was comprised of two shades of blue (darker on the bottom and lighter shade on top), as well as various stones and shrubs in the water. Although it may sound nitpicky or anal, in order to make the picture look believable, I had to photoshop the image down to the smallest detail. 

Step #4 (After 8 minutes)

I simply continued with cropping the man's body from the waist up and from the head down because I found it to be an easy task since the area I was to clone was only the sky and snow. The only detail I had to pay attention to was to make sure I had included the light blue (ice) and light brown (tree's shadow) tints on the snow to maintain the landscape of the image. I had realized that the difficult parts to clone in this photo would be the forest behind the man, the small tree in front of the forest, as well as the small shrub to the centre-right of the picture.

Step # 5 (After 5 minutes)

 

It took me roughly only five minutes  to clone the remaining half of the shrub on the left side of the photo, I had found the job of cloning the shrub to complete its right side a difficult one. What was challenging about doing this was that I couldn't get the twigs on the right side of the shrub to face the opposite direction as the twigs on the left side; which would look more realistic. Instead, because I was taking pixels from the left side of the shrub, the right side would be bound to look like the left side. This error would be rather irrelevant in the grande scheme of things because unless the photo is zoomed upon, the shrub looks believable to the human eye. The last major step in erasing the man from the photo was to create a layer of the forest scenery above the face and upper body of the man. This would probably personally be the most difficult step in the entire process and I'll explain the challenges in full detail in step # 6.

 

Step #6 (After 20 minutes)

After roughly twenty minutes, I was able to clear most of the man from the photo and clone most of the forest's trees over that area. What was generally easy, yet monotonous and time-consuming about cloning the area was cloning and creating a layer for the lower half of the forest. The fact that the lower half of the forest area was almost pitch black made the task relatively easy for me because I know it is a section of the photo that is not of great importance to the viewer's eye (Viewer's eye looks at contrast). A great challenge for me however was cloning the branches that lie on the upper part of the forest and creating a layer over the man's face. This partucular area of the photo proved to be a more difficult medium than the lower half of the forest because the color and texture was not uniform throughout, instead there were several tree branches and stems that I had to keep uniform with and several interlapping shades of grey skies. Furthermore, a small section of the forest around the centre of the photograph is slightly tinted a color of sky blue, which appeared to me as being out of character for the photo.

Step # 7 (After 10 minutes)

After roughly ten minutes, I had completely finished cropping out the man from the photo and was left with finishing the task of layering the remainder of the forest. As mentioned before, this task would be demanding due to the fact that the section of forest on the left-of-centre was shaded a tint of blue rather than pitch black like the other trees. I hadn't been pleased with the way the project was going; I didn't know how to complete the photo without altering the color of the trees in the original format but if I hadn't changed the color, the entire scenery in the photo would look unrealistic.

Step # 8 (After 15 minutes)

After fifteen minutes, I felt I had photoshopped the forest to the best of my ability without altering the photo from its original state. As before, i was very unsatisfied with the result of my work on removing and retouching the photograph. It seemed virtually ikpossible to complete the forest because there was too much color contrast between the black and light blue sections.



Step # 9 (After 10 minutes)

I decided it was okay for me to alter the photo from its original state by cloning the areas of forest on the far left and far right sides and creating a layer above the light blue section. I also added more grass strands throughout the snow where the dog is standing upon. It turned out that I was very pleased with the end result of my work of removing the man from the scenery and simply at the realism of the photo.

-by aNdReS mElEnDeZ