The image above is the original taken at a Wood fair at Ickworth House a National Trust Property in Suffolk. The main subject of the image is the steam engine but there are a number of unwanted parts not least the presence of the modern trailer to the left of the picture.
The second image is the 'cleaned up' version. As can be seen all the extraneous bits have been removed. The first step was to crop the image to remove the vehicle on the left and the arm of someone that comes in on the right hand edge. The small sign and the rope at the bottom of the image were removed using the clone tool and healing brush. I find the latter a very useful tool for such things as the rope in this image or telegraph wires in the sky.
The major problem to be faced was the intrusive trailer to the left of the image. I considered cropping but this would have placed the steam engine very close to the edge that would spoil the composition.. Advice is that there should always be space in the picture for something to move into. My approach was to select the area and then use the 'Content Aware' tool to cut out the selection. The result was surprising not least because it worked well first time which is not always the case. The straw covered ground was matched and only required random use of the clone stamp to provide realism. The hedge that can be seen between the straw covered ground and the grassed area beyond was a product of the Content Aware tool. In its search for what was likely to be behind the removed section it had used part of the tree to the left of the engine. By using the cloning stamp to disguise its source the hedge provided a neat boundary between the straw covered area and the grassed area.
This image was shown at an exhibition with the title 'Steam Up'. The only question I was asked was where was it taken. As the person asking was a member of the Camera Club I also gave a potted history of how it was created.
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