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Clone Out Problems In Photoshop

Lesson 13 from: Real Estate and Architectural Photography

Mike Kelley

Clone Out Problems In Photoshop

Lesson 13 from: Real Estate and Architectural Photography

Mike Kelley

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Lesson Info

13. Clone Out Problems In Photoshop

Lesson Info

Clone Out Problems In Photoshop

I wanted to clone out these two, these light bars here, if you will. And that is, you know, it looks like it took a long time. Like, it was, you know, but it's a very simple thing to do. And I will show you how I did that right now. So all I'm gonna do is this works on any wall that's a painted, solid color wall, something we obviously encounter every day when we're photographing architecture. I'm gonna take the pen tool, and I'm gonna do this rough and dirty, just to show you, in the interest of time here. I'm just gonna pen tool all around this brown piece of molding, and I'll do the same thing coming back. Pen tool around the contours there, all the way down, straight over, and up. And that ought to be plenty. And then I'm gonna turn that into a selection by hitting Command + Enter. And then I'll make a new layer. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna sample two colors. I'm gonna use the gradient tool, which the shortcut for that is G. It's this guy right here, underneath your paintbru...

sh, gradient tool. And I'm gonna sample a foreground color and I'm gonna come over here and sample a background color. And I'm going to set that to, instead of the linear gradient, I'm gonna go to the radial gradient, which is a circular gradient. So we're gonna get a color change out from the center. And again, any time there's like a painted wall I do this to remove light switches, or you know, like sometimes there's paint stains or nail holes or something. And I don't want to go in and clone every little thing. I'll just make a gradient of two colors, and I will just drag it out. And what you're left with, I went in the opposite direction. What you're left with is basically, basically the correct color and the correct gradient of light throughout. So again, that's the opposite. So I'm gonna switch my foreground and background colors and bring it out from the center. There we go. And that just single-handedly took care of what a year ago, to me, would have been two hours worth of Photoshop work. And again, it's, you know, like people who shoot portraits have their techniques with faces, I do architecture. And I'm telling you, the pen tool, make a gradient selection. It'll keep the natural transition of light and color through the wall still there, but it's just a great way to cheat. And I love cheating in photography, if you couldn't tell. And you know, you can clean it up very easily. And it's not until you're at over 100 percent that you see where it kind of falls apart. So in order to clean that up, I add a layer mask, I take a brush. I use blasts to kind of hide, and I just brush it out. And it's like it was never there. And then I come across to this side. And there's my pen tool line, and boom, gone. And it looks, like I said, it looks like they were never there. And I'll do the same thing here on these guys. Just pen tool, around, and make the selection. G for my gradient tool, select the foreground and a background color, and let's see, I will make a new layer. Sorry, drag out. And in order to sample those colors, there we go, you hit Alt and then that brings up your little eye dropper tool. And as you can see, I can add a mask here, can kind of cover my tracks very quickly by just brushing it out. And so of course, if I had all the time in the world to do this, I would go in and be very precise, at 100 percent, but in the interests of time, that's the technique. Very simple, and you will run into situations all the time where you see this stuff, and that's how I get a perfect gradient of color and light without spending too much time agonizingly cloning little things out. So I'll get rid of those, and I will show you. I took, maybe, 20 minutes doing this. And let's see. There we go. And there's what my end result looked like, and it's pretty seamless. And it's the same technique that I just showed you. You'd have no idea. And it looks like, you know, it's like the thousand dollar retouch job that I just did, like that. So quick little tip right there. Okay, so moving on. I have this next photo here is called the Clown Move. In all of my excitement to shoot this, in turning the breakers on and off, I completely forgot to light up these hallways back here. As you can see, the lights are off. I just oops, just completely escaped me. So what I had to do was I actually cloned out one of these lights and I added them in in each of the cans back here. And it looks kind of cheap, if you get up close to it, so I had to save it with some masking and some curves. So I went in and I kind of brightened it all up, and I'll zoom out so you can see. It's a little thing, but it really bugged me. Like, on a personal level, because I'm so intensely focused on doing this and doing a good job that I missed a very easy thing. So there's my lights in the corner turned on. And then what I did next was, I'm pretty happy the way it looks. I've got my lights added, I've got my, you know, the bar is cloned out. I had to go around and do a lot of detail cleaning. I went through and I just cloned out all kinds of different, you know, the fire extinguishers and like here's a cloning example. I'm actually not too thrilled with my clone job on that, but again, in the interest of time, I did it kind of quick and dirty for you.

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Mike Kelley is fabulous, so many aspects of his work would make for great classes! I hope Creative Live brings Mike back for many more classes. He's a great communicator with lots of info presented in his class with understandable instructions. . . not that you'll leave the class being able to recreate his amazing images! Although he is very generous in the knowledge he shares on his great techniques. Only issue was not being able to hear/view most of the class as the "live feed" kept cutting out, which was so frustrating. So, I'm purchasing the video. Hope to see Mike in more courses! Excellent!

Victor Zubakin
 

Firstly this course should be renamed to just Architectural Photography. There's very little information here about shooting real estate photography. Mike Kelley is more of a fine art architecture photographer and the techniques he shows are not really relevant for real estate photography. Kelley's well-known for his blue hour shots and with these he often sets his camera up for a few hours and documents the changing light to later blend into one image. His work is very Photoshop intensive and each photo could require a few hours post-processing in PS. Real estate photography generally requires a complete house to be shot in less than an hour and delivered to the realtor in 24-48hrs. The course is more of interest to those wanting to shoot high-end architecture or interior design projects. Kelley gives some great tips on the business side - how to do marketing, attracting new clientele, how to maintain a healthy relationship with your clients, what to do when things go wrong. Kelley also discusses what gear he uses including the very useful tilt-shift lenses, geared head on his tripod for fine control, shooting tethered, and also some of the lighting he uses. The course features a photoshoot that Kelley did of a historic theatre, and he discusses the techniques he used to capture the images as well as how he processed them in Photoshop. The course was enjoyable & informative, and Mike Kelley is an engaging & fun presenter, with a laid-back style.

a Creativelive Student
 

Enjoyed this class. Took it to learn more about architectural photography because I know little to nothing about that area of photography. I feel Mike gave a solid introduction in the how-to's of getting into this business, offered some good outside sources, gave good supporting personal stories. Would have liked to lean more about balancing light color and to be referred to some outside sources on learning more about that. Overall, I feel this was a solid intro to architectural photography.

Student Work

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