> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ AUGUST 2019[ 80 ]
REMOVING PEOPLE USING STATISTICS
There are times when we can deal with cluttered shots packed full of tourists by simply arriving at
a location early, before the rest of the world wakes up. But, sometimes, there are reasons why this
isn’t possible and we end up unable to avoid tourists. Luckily for us, there’s a seriously smart solution
offered in Adobe Photoshop that lets us remove tourists and, with only a little prep on location, we end
up with a clutter-free shot. Here’s how it works:
Photo Effects
DAV I DWILLIAMS
going to take a series of images (perhaps around a dozen)
and we need to keep our composition unchanged through-
out, so, if we’re going to get the best results and retain our
original framing, it’s very important that we use a tripod.
(If you shoot handheld, you’ll end up composing a slightly
different shot each time, no matter how hard you try, and
then you’ll lose the edges and suffer some changes in per-
spective when the algorithm gets to work.) We also need
to ensure that each shot in our series is the same as the last,
which means leaving camera settings and focus locked in.
The only difference in all the shots should be the position of
the tourists.As a result of countless tests and research surveys, there are
many smart algorithms at work inside Photoshop, trying to
determine what we want our shots to look like. One such
algorithm is entitled Statistics, and it’s the one we’re going
to use. This algorithm takes a look at a series of photos and
analyzes all the pixels, determining what the images have
in common and what their differences are. We’re going to
take advantage of this Statistics feature to remove the tour-
ists from our shot; but we first need to put the best images
into Adobe Photoshop to make sure this works.
As we’re shooting, we need to compose our scene giving
consideration to helping the algorithm do its thing. We’reALL IMAGES BY DAVE WILLIAMS