Confessions of a Photoshopaholic: Part 3

I've hardly scratched the surface of my bag of Photoshop tips and techniques! This week's Photoshop tip will show you how to fix scratches in photos. (Incidentally, check out Blog 1 and Blog 2 in this series, as they use similar techniques)

When I got this photo back from the developers (circa 1998), I remember being so mad that a scratch killed what could have been a nice shot of Niagara Falls. So, when I went through my box of old photos to look for potential Photoshop fixes, this one immediately jumped to mind.

Not all photo scratches are in convenient or easy-to-fix locations, but in this case, it should be a pretty simple task.





Falling into the Right Method

Working on a duplicate file so I don't accidentally mess up the original, let's zoom-in on our problem area using the zoom tool (or Ctrl +). Now would be a good time to remind you to clean off your scanners before using them, as you can see the abundance of dust particles in my image here.







The trick is to take areas that look similar, copy them, and paste them over the scratch. I'll start with the sky. Using the lasso tool with a feather of about 5 (again, this will always vary depending on your photo size and resolution), I'll trace around an area a little larger than the size and shape of the part of the scratch that's in the sky.






Edit Copy (Ctrl C) and Edit Paste (Ctrl V) to paste the selection onto a new layer. Then, move the selection into place using the move tool. Voila-- No more scratch in the sky area!

That looks good, so I'll right-click the layer in the Layer Panel and click "merge down" so I'm not dealing with too many layers.







Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Onward to the water area. Choosing part of the image that is similar to the part we want to cover up, repeat the same steps we just completed on the sky (lasso the selection, copy, paste, and move into place).











Now, you can see that in copying this selection, we brought in a little bit of the tree line that we don't want, along with a part of a rock. Select any part you don't want with the lasso tool, and simply delete.













Now all that's left is the waterfall part of the image. Repeat the same set of steps again to cover up the last of that nasty scratch!









There you have it – 11 years later and I finally have the technology to fix-up the scratch on a lovely photo of a rather memorable road trip.



Other blogs in this series:

Confessions of a Photoshopaholic: Part 1
Confessions of a Photoshopaholic: Part 2