So I recently attended a wedding and we were taking this group picture. Some guy just walked into picture in the upper right hand corner. Since the shutter speed was so slow, he ended up blurring. His gray hair can be seen. I'm not skilled enough in LR 4 to figure this out so I'm here to ask if it's possible to delete that from the picture? If so, how can I do this in LR 4?

Thx!

I doubt you can do it convincingly in LR as the only tool is the spot healing brush. Even in PS that would be a tough one with the busy background surrounding the guy. Because he's blurred, he's not that big a distraction in this otherwise busy photo. I'd let it go...

Rob

It can be done in photoshop, not too much work.

I think I would be more concerned about the guy on the far left who appears to be picking his nose.

Richard

BenV wrote:
It can be done in photoshop, not too much work.

That's what I was told. I can download the demo of PS CS6 and give it a shot and learn. Do you have any instructions on how to do it? I'm willing to learn.

Richard Booth wrote:
I think I would be more concerned about the guy on the far left who appears to be picking his nose.

Richard

! I didn't realized it until you mentioned it!

I wouldn't mind removing him from the picture now that you brought it to my attention.

Try using the content aware feature to remove both of these people. I just saw Julieanne Kost at the PPA Imaging USA convention do something very similar using that feature.

Rather than removing them (very difficult) just hide them in plain sight by selectively blurring the background as with shallow DOF.

It's not too difficult in PS: first duplicate the photo (two copies on separate layers) blur the top layer with lens or surface blur to the point the guys you want to hide are not noticed then use a mask to reveal the guy from the wedding in the foreground on the layer below. If you enlarge the screen view to >400% it's not to difficult to freehand a mask. In addition to blurring the background you can also apply a Levels or Curves correction and make it lighter, as if overexposed, to make the normally exposed guy in front contrast.

Post in the critique forum and you'll get lots of free edits

This was just a ten-minute quickie:

I matched the compression of the background, too. My day rate is $600. Just kidding.

Skarkowtsky wrote:
This was just a ten-minute quickie:

I matched the compression of the background, too. My day rate is $600. Just kidding.


Nice

xtremediver wrote:
Try using the content aware feature to remove both of these people. I just saw Julieanne Kost at the PPA Imaging USA convention do something very similar using that feature.

I was going to ask about that. Will Content Aware be capable of doing what I'm trying to do?

Skarkowtsky wrote:
This was just a ten-minute quickie:

I matched the compression of the background, too. My day rate is $600. Just kidding.

I started with the old man.

Created a new layer, isolated his black t shirt the the Polyganal tool, selected a deep brown from the brick wall behind him and painted the selected area.

Used the cloning tool and completed the ceiling across his head.

Used the cloning tool to fill in the back wall with stones, then blended my painted selection with the cloning technique.

Got a palm branch off google that was top-lit (to match the lighting in your photo) and photographed against white. Isolated it with the magic wand and removed the background. After placing it by eye, I blended into the rest of the plant with a feathered eraser.

Next I matched the color with the Color Balance palette, and matched the luminance with the Brightness/Contrast palette.

Added a 2.2 Gaussian Blur to knock it into an out-of-focus focal plane.

For the guy in the lower left. Isolated him with Polyganol tool and painted the selection to match the blown out background.

^ thank you for sharing John!.