When taking photos, a common problem is unwanted
objects in your image. Let’s take a look at three methods you can
use to remove unwanted objects from your photos in Photopea. All three of these methods can give you great
results, depending on the complexity of the item your trying to remove, or the background
behind it. So, let’s check out how they work,
and when you should use each of them. I’ll be using these three images today,
and you can download each of them from Pexels if you want to follow along. The links will be in the description. Before we get started, if you find this content
useful and would like to help enable me to produce more, please consider supporting me
on Ko-fi, at ko-fi.com slash todaystuts. Any amount is appreciated, and will help me
keep this channel active. Let’s start with this beach photo first. This is the simplest way to remove an item,
with the least effort. First, duplicate the background layer so we
can work on this non-destructively, and rename the new layer Fill. Zoom in using the zoom tool, or just hold
down Alt and scroll up with your mouse wheel. We’re going to remove one of these umbrellas,
and it’s shadow, by using the Fill option. This method works best when the background
is not too complicated, like with this sandy beach. The umbrellas are completely surrounded by
the same type of background, which allows Photopea to calculate what it should like
for you. You would run into difficulties using this
method if the background was half sand and half pavement, for example. Photopea would have trouble calculating exactly
what it should look like, but with just a sandy background with a simple pattern, it
can do all the work for you. First, we need to make a selection of the object we want to replace. Switch to the Lasso Select tool here, or just
click the L key. Now, just draw a selection around the umbrella
you’d like to remove, keeping the selection as tight around the object as possible. You want to minimize the selected area so
that Photopea only has to replace as much of the background as necessary. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but get it
as close as you can. Once you have your selection, go up to the
edit menu, and select fill. Change the Fill option to Content Aware, and
select OK. It will take a few seconds to calculate what
will be in the area that is filled, and the umbrella will be replaced. You can see how Photopea filled in the background
based on the content surrounding what you’re trying to replace, in this case it used some
of the sand from up in this area. Let’s try one more, use the lasso select
tool, draw a selection around the item, and go to edit, fill, and make sure fill is set
to content aware, and click OK. Nice, it looks pretty good. If we zoom out, you can’t tell where the
edit is, it looks completely natural. Let’s move on to the next image. In this image, we’re going to remove the
clip, which is a little more difficult since it’s on wood, with the grain showing. Using the previous method, fill, this wouldn’t
get good results. Let’s take a look at what would happen if
we used fill here. I’ll make a quick selection with the lasso
select tool, and try to get it as accurate as possible. Then, I’ll go to edit, and fill, and you
can see the issues we have. It doesn't look too bad, but the wood grain
doesn’t line up, some of this texture doesn’t belong here, and this line is broken. So, I’ll press Ctr-Z to undo, and let’s
duplicate the background layer. We’ll be using the patch tool here, so I’ll
rename the layer to patch. We’ve already got a pretty good selection,
so let’s leave it as is, and switch to the Patch tool, which you can find here, or just
press the J key, until you have the patch tool activated. From here, just click and drag inside the
selection down, and Photopea will patch the selection with the texture from the opposite
direction from where you drag. Make sure to keep everything aligned, as best
as possible, and release the mouse button. Since we don't have much room to patch this
area with, after releasing the mouse button, just drag down again, until everything is
removed. Now, everything is patched cleanly. If we zoom out, everything looks good. So, use the patch tool, when the background
starts to get a little more complex, and you need to manually align elements to keep them
looking clean. Finally, we have our most difficult example,
which neither the fill or patch tool can fix for us. In this image, I want to remove the woman,
leaving just the building behind her. There are lots of differing textures and edges
that will give the other tools problems. You wont be able to get clean results using
either of them. But, Photopea has another tool, the Clone
tool, which will work great with images like this. This method will take the most effort, but
you can do some amazing stuff with it. Let’s duplicate the background layer, and
rename the new layer Clone. Select the Clone tool here, or press the S
key. The way the clone tool works, is by taking
a sample from a point on the image, and then we can paint on the canvas which will be filled
in with content from the area we selected. You can choose where to take the sample from
by holding down the Alt key, and clicking on the canvas. So, first we need to remove her from the blue
part of the wall. I’ll take a sample from up here, and we’ll
use that to paint over her. So, hold down Alt, and click on this area. Notice, the brush now contains some of the
blue from the area we clicked. If I increase the size, you can see how the
image itself has been added to the brush. I’ll decrease the size back down, and notice
that when I hold down the left mouse button, it paints on top of the image from the source
area we selected. Notice the little crosshairs to the right
of the brush, that shows you where the sample is coming from. So, as you paint down, you can see how the
tool is working, painting on the canvas, starting from the sample area we defined. Before we get started, one issue we’ll have
that may make this look unnatural, is the hardness of the brush. The edges of the brush are hard, and can make
it difficult to paint smoothly over the background, so let’s turn down the hardness to about
40 percent. Now when we paint, the edges are softer, which
will make it a little easier to paint naturally over the background. So, just use the brush to paint over her head
where the blue paint is on the wall. Try to get right up against this white section,
and go ahead and fill in any areas which would have the blue paint behind her. Next, we need to fill in this white box, but
we need to use the cone tool to create the edge, the transition between white and blue. Let’s go over here, and make a new sample,
starting from the corner of this white box, and we’ll clone it over to the other side. Hold down Alt, align the crosshairs right
over this corner, and left click. Hold down the space bar, and drag the canvas
back over, and align the corner that you can see on the brush, where you think the corner
of this square is, and just paint over to the right. Align the brush up with the corner you just
painted, and start painting down, filling in the left edge, all the way down to the
bottom. Then, go ahead and fill in the interior of
this square. If you go too far, and paint in some texture
that you don’t want, just hold down Alt, and take another sample from inside the white
square, and fill in anything you don’t like. Now, we have another edge here, that we need
to duplicate, so take a sample right on the edge, line up the edge from the brush with
the edge from the background, and start painting over and filling that edge out. Keep painting down, and fill in this area
here. Take another sample from the bottom edge,
line up the brush, and fill in this area. That’s really all there is too it. Just keep taking samples from areas that can
replace the old image, and fill them in. Sometimes, you might get areas that look a
little funny, since the lighting and texture is slightly different on different areas of
the wall. If that happens, just take a sample closer
to the area you are painting over, and fill in any spots that don’t look natural. Any time you have a hard edge or corner, take
a sample directly over it, that way you can line up your brush with the edge, and replace
it. Just keep making samples, and filling in where
necessary. Here, I’ll make a sample of the edge between
the wall and ground, and paint over her feet. And, there you go. She is completely removed from the finished
image, with a completely natural looking background, using the clone tool. So, a quick recap, using Fill, with content
aware selected, we can remove items that are on fairly simple backgrounds, with one texture,
and no edges that need to be lined up. If an item needs to be replaced on a background
that has edges or textures that need to be lined up to look natural, we can make a selection
and use the Patch tool to drag and remove the item, preserving the edges. And finally, when we have a complicated background
with multiple textures and edges that wont look clean using either of these methods,
we can use the clone tool to take a sample, and paint directly from the sampled area,
and repeat until we have fully removed the item. Thanks for watching, hope you found this helpful. Follow me on Twitter @TodaysTuts if you’d
like to get in contact, or to find out when I post new videos.
