Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Chairman Bill on May 27, 2011, 07:11:28 pm
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I am used to making repairs to an image (mainly removing dust, or maybe the odd bird that is so indistinct that it looks like dust), but here's the problem; how do I remove powerlines from a photo, without distorting the sky to such an extent that it's noticeable, and without spending half my life doing it? Answers on the back of a postcard, or you can stick 'em up here.
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Here's the hot shot way...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiJuCFMTSJE
But I'm so backwards I usually just bang away with the healing brush and the rubber stamp. With those tools, best to create an empty layer on top of your image, then switch to that layer. Make the you have "current and below" selected in the tool bar. Then all your rubber stamping winds up on the new layer where it can be erased, blurred, adjusted, or just tossed without messing up your original image.
And there are a bazillion other ways to do it.
Edit...the real trick with my backward method is to sample areas that are well away from the area where you will paint, but which are still similar in density. Prevents "resonating" nearby shapes, or as we call it here, "The Iranian Rocket Effect."
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I've tried a similar method (Aperture is non-destructive, so no need for the layers), but after 123 different strokes of the 'healing brush', I gave up in frustration!
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I wouldn't use a program like Aperture for that. This is something that needs the refinement of Photoshop. In Photoshop some of it will respond well to the spot healing brush, and some will need a very soft, properly-sized clone tool approach. Depending on the nature of the surrounding content, sometimes you can make a soft-edge layer of the material immediately above or below the line, and simply move it over the line, making sure any seams are smothered-out.
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Yes, any sort of major replacement needs Photoshop. Takes a lot of practice. Are you dragging the brush, or just making a lot of static pokes? Dragging + wiggling is good technique.
Another technique is to duplicate the image layer, then shift one of the layers a few times the width of the line, diagonally is best. Then create a mask on the top layer. Brush black on the mask over the area you want to de-wire, causes the "clear" area below to show through. I still like the rubber stamp, however.
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I think using Content-Aware Fill as Russel Brown demos in that YouTube video can also be a very efficient way of doing it. It depends on the complexity of the material surrounding the line. I've used it where the surroundings are not complex, but found I had to use more manual techniques for lines crossing areas of high density detail, taking great care that everything which should "register" in place of the line does so.
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With the content aware healing brush, I found squiggles to be very effective for your image. Lots of up backing up, etc. Size 5, Hardness 10, Spacing 25.
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And then, after an hour of carefully removing all those wires from your shot, you realize that you have to remove the shadows of those wires, too. ;D
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A new sky? I think there is room to add a layer with a sky in it and use the gradient tool. This means no intricate selections involved.
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Hmm. I'm not sure it's worth getting Photoshop just for that. Will Elements cover it?
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Hmm. I'm not sure it's worth getting Photoshop just for that. Will Elements cover it?
You could download a trial version of Photoshop (either CS5 or Elements). You can use it for 30 days for free.
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Using a hand saw prior to shooting might also help ....
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Hmm. I'm not sure it's worth getting Photoshop just for that. Will Elements cover it?
I haven't used elements but I believe it has layers. The process is quite simple. Google for layers and gradient tool. It is a good way of combining a new sky with an existing one without using selections. You need a a fair portion of sky in the original.
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Bill
I have sorted out the odd powerline now and then using the clone tool in Elements. I wouldn't think of trying it in LR, which is what I use most of the time. But it does take a lot of practice - it's easiest against fairly random texture such as leaves or grass which you can replicate without much problem. Clouds are pretty tricky, any slight mismatch in tonal density or texture screams at you. There are so many wires here that I just would not bother taking them out.
If the picture was really major league important to you for some reason, just get a pro re-toucher to do the job and pay them the going rate.
John
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I downloaded the image, resized it and looked at it "close-up". "Content-aware" was not very helpful for this one because of the alternating background between sky and cloud, some of which is completely clipped. It needs very careful cloning. It just takes time and practice. This is a craft and most craft does take time and patience. No reason why you can't use Elements.
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If the picture was really major league important to you for some reason ...
It isn't, and neither are any of the others I want to remove such features from, I was offereing it as an example of the sort of thing where I find it really difficult to deal with these things. Thought there might be some easy techy way to sort it that I was unaware of.
Everyone, thanks for the comments & advice. I might have to fall back on my demolitions training & just bring down the pylons with some well-paced cutting charges. Anyone got any PE4/C4 & det. cord going spare?
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Using a hand saw prior to shooting might also help ....
In fact, if you don't wear your extra-thick rubber boots, you'll never worry about a power line in one of your photographs ever again. Problem solved.
Jeremy
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Sorry, used up all my C4 removing fence posts and repositioning boulders.
A landscape photographer can benefit from a good assistant...
(http://trustedadvisor.com/public/image/godzilla_560b.jpg)
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You might take a look at
http://vicanek.de/plugins/wireworm.htm
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You might take a look at
http://vicanek.de/plugins/wireworm.htm
Windows only.
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I've tried a similar method (Aperture is non-destructive, so no need for the layers), but after 123 different strokes of the 'healing brush', I gave up in frustration!
Fwiw, Aperture is fine for this task. Set your brush to about 5x the width of the wire, 100% opacity, automatically select source. Do about 1/4" of screen real-estate at a time. Having parallel wires is actually somewhat helpful: you can do 1/4" of each wire, then return the first wire, which should be "healed" by then. 123 strokes may seem like a lot, but it can be done fairly quickly. I'd do all the wires, then go back and fix anything ugly.
That many strokes will bog down Aperture on any machine. You are well advised to close it down and re-open it a couple of times.
Working with a tablet will speed things up.
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I recently read on a book a technique that sounds quite interesting (at least on paper, I have not had the opportunity to test it myself). After you take your picture, move a few meters and take a second shot: the sky sill be exactly the same, but the power lines will have moved. Now put both images on separate layers, align them, and use a mask to select the portion of each image without the lines.
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I recently read on a book a technique that sounds quite interesting (at least on paper, I have not had the opportunity to test it myself). After you take your picture, move a few meters and take a second shot: the sky sill be exactly the same, but the power lines will have moved. Now put both images on separate layers, align them, and use a mask to select the portion of each image without the lines.
That sounds like a great idea, assumed the clouds don't move too fast while you're moving.
Actually I wonder if removing powerlines at all is such a good idea.
Of course, at times we want a nice image, and I myself often have been annoyed by that kind of "junk", which often stopped me from taking a photograph - but on the other hand its a fact that mankind does something with nature and its environment - not always good. Removing the powerlines also removes the documentation of that man-made alteration from the image.
I don't want to say its bad to do that, just want to emphasize that aspect of the whole thing and remind of not forgetting it.
E.g. one could decide not to remove this kind of artifacts,use them in ones composition instead and make something unique out of it - which would be an art of its own.
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That sounds like a great idea, assumed the clouds don't move too fast while you're moving.
Actually I wonder if removing powerlines at all is such a good idea.
Of course, at times we want a nice image, and I myself often have been annoyed by that kind of "junk", which often stopped me from taking a photograph - but on the other hand its a fact that mankind does something with nature and its environment - not always good. Removing the powerlines also removes the documentation of that man-made alteration from the image.
I don't want to say its bad to do that, just want to emphasize that aspect of the whole thing and remind of not forgetting it.
E.g. one could decide not to remove this kind of artifacts,use them in ones composition instead and make something unique out of it - which would be an art of its own.
That's New Topographics in a nutshell, no?
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That's New Topographics in a nutshell, no?
Seems I have missed that until now - thanks for the hint!
Wikipedia was my friend after reading your post.
Now I can officially claim to be the re-inventor of some post-Ansel photographic style from the seventies ...
:P
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Seems I have missed that until now - thanks for the hint!
Wikipedia was my friend after reading your post.
Now I can officially claim to be the re-inventor of some post-Ansel photographic style from the seventies ...
:P
Happy to help. :)
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With regard to the second exposure from a slightly different POV --- in some circumstances that could work - I'm going to give it a try, thanks.
With blue skies/powerlines, I often quick-select the sky, contract the selection by a few pixels, then copy/paste to a new layer. With the move tool, I move the new sky layer up/down until the wires are at least mostly occluded, then flatten. Saves a lot of work, since even a clear blue sky can be composed of some complex gradients that get screwed up via cloning and healing.
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The various techniques described here for covering over the power lines can of course work, but they are not exempt from the potential difficulty of discontinuous tonality. One still needs to be aware of the possibility even if the surrounding sky seems quite uniform. Sometimes it is necessary to add Curves clipping masks to these covering layers and make slight adjustments to tone and colour.
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A technique described by Blatner and Chavez in their excellent Photoshop book works very well. It involves drawing a path over the power lines using the Pen tool and then stroking the path with the Clone tool by setting the target right adjacent to the path (with an appropriate brush size). It works very well in most cases (you get better with practice). I read of this method years ago in one of their earlier editions. The same approach works in CS5 with the Content-aware tool (instead of Clone) although I have found the Clone tool works better in the instances I used it on.
ps: Power lines were quickly cloned out in these images here using the technique mentioned above -
http://www.parrikar.com/blog/2009/11/29/sunset-in-saligao/
pps: Chairman Bill - with this technique it would be a cinch to remove the power lines in your photo.
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Hi
Edit
sorry, I never got to page 2 - so yes the same as the above....sorry feeling really silly....should read the full post.
I am not sure if this has been mentioned before, but if you are handy with the pen-tool ;-) then use it, to trace your power line on a dub layer (Crtl+J/Apple+J), you can trace multiple lines, then make each line into a selection (if you into the path) and then expand the selection to go just beyond the powerlines width and tada tada...use the new fill feature ....which just slipped my mind as I am not sittting infront...ahh, content aware fill ;-), this could do the trick for you ;-)
try it, it will take you alot shorter time and could be a very elegant way to solve this problem ;-)
Henrik
PS: you can send me a low res and i will have a go at it!
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That sounds like a great idea, assumed the clouds don't move too fast while you're moving.
Actually I wonder if removing powerlines at all is such a good idea.
Of course, at times we want a nice image, and I myself often have been annoyed by that kind of "junk", which often stopped me from taking a photograph - but on the other hand its a fact that mankind does something with nature and its environment - not always good. Removing the powerlines also removes the documentation of that man-made alteration from the image.
I don't want to say its bad to do that, just want to emphasize that aspect of the whole thing and remind of not forgetting it.
E.g. one could decide not to remove this kind of artifacts,use them in ones composition instead and make something unique out of it - which would be an art of its own.
A few months ago at the request of one of my gallery, I removed an entire city of 34,000 (Apache Junction, AZ) from the side of a mountain. Every house, business, road, power line, etc. The gallery sells both large canvas versions side-by-side. Half the sales are with and half without habitation. One does what one must. It's entertaining to see people from the city finding their house on one canvas as well as those viewing the other saying, Hey, where did my house go?
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A few months ago at the request of one of my gallery, I removed an entire city of 34,000 (Apache Junction, AZ) from the side of a mountain. Every house, business, road, power line, etc. The gallery sells both large canvas versions side-by-side. Half the sales are with and half without habitation. One does what one must. It's entertaining to see people from the city finding their house on one canvas as well as those viewing the other saying, Hey, where did my house go?
The silent nuke .... ;)
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You got to show us that, as I am unlikely to come visit your gallery :-) <got to is probably a little strong wording, but It would be really interesting to see>
thanks very much - it is interesting the requests people ask for when it comes to what to include and what to excluded in an excisting photo - but as long as they are willing to pay for it, they can have it ;-)
Henrik
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Thanks everyone for your comments & advice. I'll keep note of the Photoshop guidance for when I get around to getting a copy. 'Til then, blowing up the pylons sounds like the way to go.