Retouching Pictures

Retouching pictures is a tricky process where small and minute changes are required, but the small changes might also jeopardize the final result. In this tutorial I will process only the basic procedures to retouch your images in photoshop.

I will use the following picture as basis for the examples in this tutorial.

I stumbled across this picture by accident on my way around the internet, so I do not know who owns the rights to the image. I just felt sad for the couple getting married and having a picture like this (the problem with the picture should be self-evident) so I decided to retouch it, and use it as the base for this tutorial.

The picture has an obvious problem, a couple is walking on the beach behind husband and wife to be, and generally disturbs the image quite a lot. In the bottom left corner there is also the out-of-focus head of a guest at the wedding, and the levels of the picture could use some editing as well.

First of all, lets see what kind of methods we have available for editing this picture. 

Methods/Weapons of choice

1. Stamp tool

   The stamp tool is the most used and well known retouch tool in Photoshop, used correctly it can produce amazing results, but be careful, over-use of the stamp tool might result in strange results.

2. Re-use

   Reusing areas of the photograph is a quick but also very effective way to manipulate pictures. This method is basically copy-pasting areas using the lasso tool from other parts of the image, and then copy-paste it into the area where you need it. When used in conjunction with the stamp tool, it can create very realistic results.

3. Drawing

   In some cases, you do not have a big enough area to use the stamp tool, nor the re-use method, so you are left with drawing yourself. This technique involves hundreds if not thousands of brushstrokes, to give a realistic result. This method is only recommended for experienced users, the result might otherwise look "cartoon" and not give well-rounded results.

Step 1 - Removing the couple

First of all, lets start by removing the couple in the back. For this I use the stamp tool set to a low opacity, and then I often change the are from which I stamp, to ensure a certain degree of randomness.

Using the stamp tool is easy, but you can also easily make tiny mistakes, which might not be visible when you are zoomed in on the area you are working on, but it gets quite obvious when you zoom out.

Notice the repeating pattern here marked within the red rectangle? This is due to over-use of the stamp tool, and by not changing the angle of the stamp tool often enough.

The couple is now almost gone, but the sand and the dark blue line in the water does not look good. It looks slightly blurry near the edges, and its quite obvious that the water in the background where the couple used to be, was stamped out.

Step 2 - Removing the head

Removing the head in the foreground was done by method #2, re-use. I simply copied an area of the girls dress, and moved it downwards, blocking the head out. I made some minute changes in the dress, so it did not seem to be repeating the pattern, and then used a bit of the beach from the right side of the image, to totally remove the head. I also used the tiny area of the dark blue line of the water to the left of the image, and copy-pasted it to the right part, to integrate it better with the area where I removed the couple.

Step 3 - Final touches

Here I simply used the stamp tool to remove the small dots seen in the image (notice one right next to the girls head) and then edited the levels of the image (shortcut: CTRL-L). I did not finetune the image more than that, as the goal of this tutorial was to touch the subject of retouching images.

Click to enlarge

The final result

Click to enlarge

Here is the final image side by side with the original.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. 

Final note: The Heal tool in Photoshop can also be used with amazing results, but it does not always provide accurate results, and then you will have to resort to manual labor tools, which is the focus of this tutorial. I will highlight the heal brush in another tutorial.