Photoshop Tutorial: Removing Crowds
April 6th, 2008 | Published in Featured, Photography | 28 Comments
I think it was one of the very first episodes of the TWiP podcast (This Week in Photography) that I sort of bragged to my co-hosts about some of my secret Photoshop kung-fu skills. Basically I was saying that I knew of a technique for easily removing crowds from, say, a busy street scene.
So, after much taunting (practically every show), here’s the promised screencast! In it I reveal the secret and mysterious technique to all. Seriously though, It’s actually pretty cool that you can have Photoshop do the heavy lifting in a retouch job that previously might have taken hours.
I’ve also created a video page that will host all of the videos I post (gotta love Wordpress). Oh, and by the way, all of the photos and video for this screencast were taken with my Canon G9!
I originally found out about this technique from Martin Evening. Be sure to check out his blog on Photoshop Lightroom. He’s also written a “bible-sized” book called “Photoshop CS3 for Professional Photographers“. It’s a must read, and an excellent reference guide. And finally, be sure to check out his work.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:24 am (#)
Great one! Hard to find tutorials that cover those exotic yet very useful functions. Thanks a lot!
April 7th, 2008 at 5:34 am (#)
[...] his promise to show how to remove crowds from a photograph using some Photoshop Mojo. Check out the video. Way to go [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 9:13 am (#)
You’re scaring me dude….that’s like voodoo magic or something!
April 7th, 2008 at 11:14 am (#)
It seems this isn’t really possible in Photoshop Elements. The closest equivalent might be “PhotoMerge Group Photo” (where you select the “negative space” of the group (ie, where people are not, instead of where people are). Not quite as automagic, though. I wonder if the various “lite” editors (Pixelmator, Acorn, even Gimp) support anything like this?
Second, it seems likely you’ll lose a bit more than just distracting people here. Presumably there was water flowing from that fountain, which will differ from picture to picture: how did that turn out? How about shadows which move from the progress of the day between first pic and last?
It sounds like you’ll need to be planning for this when you take pictures. Obviously you want a rather stable location for your photography. Do you also need to take care to keep aperture, exposure, sensitivity, etc, consistent?
April 7th, 2008 at 11:19 am (#)
Great post, thanks. To many times have I given up on a photo due to crowds.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:55 am (#)
Hey Tom, I’m not sure about how those other editors handle this. For my personal work, I’ve always just defaulted to Photoshop for this level of retouching. Everything else is neatly handled by Lightroom.
You’re correct in that you’ll lose things from the scene that are in motion, but the good news is, you can always clone those items back in from your source images. Remember, while this technique isn’t perfect, it’ll get you very close to your desired end result.
Regarding the movement of shadows, you’ll probably want to take the photos in a relatively short span of time … e.g. a few minutes. I haven’t tried the “hours between shots” thing, but it’d be an interesting test.
And like any multi-image project, you’ll typically want to keep consistent exposure settings throughout the range. Photoshop does a great job of fixing this, but it’s always best to give it good source material to work with.
The shots in this tutorial were done with the camera set on Auto … aka snapshot mode.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:33 pm (#)
Dude.. that is fantastic. I shoot mostly people, but this technique can save me so much time editing vacation/outdoor shots.
Cheers,
Randy
April 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm (#)
Fred, awesome video. I wish I had known this was possible before now, there’s a lot of situations where I would have used it. Thanks!!
April 7th, 2008 at 2:07 pm (#)
Great screencast and tutorial, Fred. Thank you for taking the time to share.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:11 pm (#)
Sir, just as you said on TWIP.
Great tip keep up the good work.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:46 pm (#)
Thanks for the tip, it will come in handy!
April 7th, 2008 at 8:17 pm (#)
Great tutorial,
At the start when you are flipping through the individual images, what are you using to do this? That’s not the normal view in Preview.app, it buggs me that the default image viewer in OS X doesn’t allow you to eaisly flip through photos one at a time. Is this some weird Cover-flow setting I’m not familiar with?
April 7th, 2008 at 8:58 pm (#)
[...] Tutorial: Removing Crowds :: FrederickVan.com Photoshop Tutorial: Removing Crowds :: FrederickVan.com: [...]
April 7th, 2008 at 9:39 pm (#)
@David
When I’m flipping through the images at the beginning of this tutorial, I’m just using the “Quick Look” feature in Mac OS X Leopard. Just select a file and hit Command+Y, or tap the space bar — the file will pop open.
This works for most file types, including PDF, XLS, most image types, sound files, video, etc. It’s almost second nature for me now.
That said, Apple explains it better than I can.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quicklook.html
April 8th, 2008 at 5:08 pm (#)
great tutorial …
thank you …
April 11th, 2008 at 6:05 am (#)
Thanks for coming through on you promise in such style. Nice job. Great in fact!
April 13th, 2008 at 2:58 pm (#)
Fred - Thank you for sharing. I often use this technique for creating a “clean plate” for compositing work. Lightroom Rockz!! see you at NAB?
[m]
April 15th, 2008 at 8:52 am (#)
Does this only work in the extended version of CS3? I tried this last night, but did not get an option to create a smart object from the stack in the Stacks dialog box.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:58 am (#)
@Dennis, yes this is a Photoshop CS3 Extended feature. It was originally designed for medical image analysis.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:33 pm (#)
Hi
I want to thank you for the wonderful video “Removing People”, I had no idea that this could be done. I was hoping that there was a step by step written version of this tutorial available for download. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your consideration and also for the knowledge you share.
Tony
April 25th, 2008 at 10:02 am (#)
Great video and extremely useful!!! Thank you for sharing…
May 9th, 2008 at 6:15 pm (#)
Thank you. This was a great video.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:02 am (#)
Hi Frederick,
an excellent video, I enjoyed it very much. One thing that would be great for you to go over would be the opposite: a series of action shots with the same background, but instead of removing the deltas, having them all in?
May 16th, 2008 at 9:39 am (#)
So, you mean like a composite? I think that would be better accomplished using more “traditional” tools like layer masks, layer transparency, and alpha channels?
Can you describe a use case?
May 16th, 2008 at 9:43 am (#)
Hi Frederick,
As an example, taking 5 shots per second of a person jumping off a cliff, hand held. Is there a photoshop tool that will open all 5 photos, aligns them (as there is handheld wobble) and shows the diver in 5 different positions at the same time?
The reason I asked in this article is that I know little of the new SmartObjects and automations, and this sounds like something they could do. Can they? Or does it still need to be done with the stick shift?
thanks,
alex s.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 am (#)
[...] I learnt how to do this technique resently from Fredrick Van who has a great video tutorial on removing crowds over his [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:08 am (#)
Well done tutorial on a very interesting and helpful trick to know!!! Also, as a 911 Dispatcher of over 4 years, you have the perfect radio voice!
July 20th, 2008 at 2:59 pm (#)
Thanks for publishing this Fred - there’s some really cool stuff in that video.
The trouble is that I nearly missed it because I listen to TWIP but don’t always catch the blog… is there any chance you can get future videos into the TWIP iTunes feed?
Thanks again, Mark