Beat the crowds with Photoshop!

Dan Mold demonstrates a cunning technique to help you quickly remove people from busy crowded photo hotspots

- Dan Mold

If you’re shooting a popular location after hours, you might have to share the space with a fellow photographer or two, but with a little common sense, it’s not difficult to work around each other. However, visit the same location in the middle of the day and you’ll often have to contend with crowds of sightseers.

If you’re intent on capturing a deserted scene, you have two options: wait and hope for a lull in the flow of day trippers, or  remove each and every offender in post-processing. The former is preferable if you’re happy to wait, but during the hour we spent at Glastonbury Tor, the flow of  visitors never let up, so this wasn’t a viable option.

The obvious remedy in postprocessing is to use the Clone Stamp tool or Healing Brush tool in Adobe’s Photoshop CC, or other image-editing software, to sample existing parts of the image to cover up the unwanted figures.  This method is most effective if a figure partially obscures a linear section of the scene, such as a brick wall or bush. The repetitive nature of these objects allow them to be cloned with relative success. However, if the figure partially obscures something unique, such as a statue or a spindly tree, these types of objects are much more difficult to replicate.

THE MISSION

Combine multiple images using layer masks to remove crowds

Time needed 1 hour

Skill level Advanced

Kit needed

• Tripod

• Shutter release