- Okay, testing one, two, three.
Oh yeah.
Yep, that's the ticket right there.
Mmhmm.
I think I drink too much coffee.
Said no one ever.
Now check these out, these are my new Canadian,
Peter McKinnon Canadian James Coffee
camp enamel maple leaf mugs.
That's a long title.
They're super awesome, they're made out of like enamel.
They look great for Instagram bangers and stuff like that.
So yeah, I thought I'd point that out.
Mmhmm.
Ah, link down below.
Cheers, ah, ooh.
What are we doing?
I easily get distracted.
Is this fully charged yet?
Notes.
There is an old man that keeps
ripping down this street on a quad.
No helmet, just straight savage.
Vroom!
Kinda starting to irritate me.
Okay, we should start this video.
(intro rock music)
You see what I?
What's up, everybody?
Peter McKinnon here and welcome back to another video.
It's Monday, we're going to hit the ground running
with something that I love to do in photos sparingly,
is getting rid of people, getting rid of things,
getting rid of objects.
Mostly people and or tourists depending
on the places that you visit.
Sometimes you can have a dope shot,
it looks so great and you're like,
if only like those nine people at the
very end there were just gone.
Like, how do I get rid of them fast
where I'm not going to be sitting here for 16 hours?
I don't really know, I've never sat here for 16 hours
by the way, I don't know where I came up with that number.
I don't want to be sitting here for the next like,
45 minutes trying to erase somebody or erase a car.
I would prefer to have them gone
because the photo would just look better without them.
Alright, there's two schools of thought here.
There's some people that think like, no,
you shouldn't digitally remove or add
or tweak photos that much at all.
Like, that's not something you should do as a photographer.
Then there are the people who are like, nah,
like I'll do whatever I want
and the end result is my art anyway.
So if I want it to look this way,
then that's how I'm gonna do it.
And I kind of lean towards that side.
Again, I mean, this is art, right?
It's subjective and however you feel that you want
to edit your photos, the end result,
as long as you are happy, is the right result.
So today we're going to teach you guys that.
I'm going to teach you how to get rid of people in photos.
It's very, very easy.
It's not as hard as you think.
I think the stigma that comes around like using Photoshop
or something like that to remove people
from a photo is a very daunting like, oh,
I'll just wait here for another 40 minutes
and hopefully they move out of the way.
But sometimes you gotta keep going when you're traveling
and you wanna snap that picture,
there's 10 people in the photo.
It would just look better with them out.
So I'm gonna show you how to do that.
I remember one of the first times
I removed 30 people from a photo.
I was so pumped, it took me so long to do.
But I think it was a shot from the Bahamas.
And I had like a really nice sand bar
that just like went off into infinity.
And it looked so good.
This guy's driving by again, like.
Find a field or a forest or something, man.
What are you doing?
I remember when I finally finished the photo,
I was just like super excited.
Because to me, it just looked way better.
I love taking landscape photos
and sometimes you might have the most epic landscape
in front of you but like three or four people
might just be also trying to get that same photo.
Nothing wrong with that.
But they happen to be in your frame
and you want that frame specifically.
So in that instance, I have no problem
removing people like that from a shot.
So method number one would be like,
obviously to just wait around.
You don't want to use any programs,
you don't want to dive into the nitty gritty
of actually digitally removing someone.
You could just wait wherever you are
until no one's in the way.
I've even asked people to politely move.
Like, hey, what's up guys?
I'm just trying to get like one nice, beautiful shot.
Just like a crisp vista of this waterfall here.
Do you mind like, taking like 20 steps
back just so I can shoot this?
Like, maybe we should just all shoot at the same time
from this same line so none of us are in anyone's photos.
And a lot of the time, if you're just nice,
you're just nice to people and just open up a conversation
and a dialogue with other like-minded individuals
who are also trying to get nice shots, maybe even help them,
people are going to move out of the way for you.
Like if you walk up and say hey, like, get out of the way!
Get out, no I'm trying to, can you.
No one's going to move for you like that.
It's, pfft, come on man, just be nice to people.
You'll solve like more than half your issues in life.
I digress.
That's kind of step one, just talking with people,
making friends with the other photographers there,
asking them politely to move is sometimes the best way
to get that shot without anybody in it.
Step two is using a tripod and doing a long exposure.
If you have your camera on a tripod
and that shutter is open, people moving in and out
of that frame aren't going to show up
if the shutter speed is long enough.
I remember once I was in Las Vegas.
I flew to Las Vegas myself just
to take photos for the weekend.
I think I had just got the original 5D camera
and I was so amped to use it
and I was like, I'm going to Vegas.
I'm just going to shoot for two days by myself,
get a hotel and just like run around the city.
And that's all I did and it was amazing.
I remember standing in The Mirage
with my tripod, like camera on it, doing the long exposure
of like the revolution sign that was like
the Beatles' show back, I don't even know,
probably like 2009 this probably would have been.
Wow, that was nine years ago?
Nine years ago, hoo.
People were walking through the casino back and forth.
Some people were even stopping in front of the camera like
wah, what's up, this is so funny!
And I was like, this is a 35, 40 second long exposure.
You're not going to be in it.
And when that photo finally finished,
there was nobody in the frame.
It looked like that casino was empty
just because that shutter was open for 40 seconds.
So people walking through it don't just get registered.
Now if they had stopped for like 25 seconds
to take a photo of the same thing,
that may have burned itself into the image.
But because people were just passing through,
I had no problem.
So method two would be using a long exposure on the tripod.
Just in case there's movement in front
of the landscape or whatever it is that you're shooting
and you want that to be gone,
long exposure will probably do that for you.
Now the third option would be using Photoshop
and digitally removing those people after the fact.
Okay, once you fire up Photoshop
there are one of two ways to do it.
With my technique, using either
the clone stamp or the content aware fill.
Now content aware fill can pretty much
get rid of anything in photos within reason.
But with every update of Photoshop,
it becomes more and more scary and magical.
And it's like, David Copperfield is living inside my iMac.
Spirit of Houdini inside.
Magic jokes.
Okay, so we've got this nice photo here of this waterfall.
And now particularly,
I think it looks better with Matti in it.
This wasn't an accident.
He didn't happen to run in and be like, wah.
I took it with him specifically standing there.
But let's just say we wanted to get rid of it
because we wanted an iPhone background
and we didn't want good old Matti in the photo.
So there's a few ways we could go about it.
Number one, hit S on your keyboard.
That brings up the clone stamp and then you can
use the brackets to make it bigger or smaller.
So for example, when you hold option down
you'll notice a target pops up.
Now when you click with that target,
that then copies that area.
So if we move our mouse over his face,
it's copied that area over his face.
So now if we click, we've clone stamped it there.
We click again, click again.
You'll notice if we click and hold it down,
you see that little target to the right.
That's actually where it's taking it from.
So if we were to move more and more right,
you'll notice because that target is now
in the dark area of the water, the water's getting darker.
If we wanted to clone stamp him out entirely,
we could just click and start playing around
with it until it looked pretty good.
Now my issue with clone stamping,
I'm gonna fix this here, is that sometimes
you can tell it's a clone stamp if you clone stamp a lot.
Like, if it's a small pop can or maybe just a tiny little
logo or a rock or a piece of garbage or a weird twig,
it's usually fine.
If you're clone stamping out multiple people out of a photo
that are like very prominent in that photo,
sometimes it can look bad unless you're a wizard.
I am not a wizard so I don't always do this.
But like, for example, when we get to the edge of the water
here I would click on the very edge of the water
so that it's clone stamping the edge.
Same thing, go back and forth until he was totally gone.
And same thing with the edge of the water.
Clone stamp that way and then we would just maybe
get rid of the rocks in a few different spots.
And he's pretty much gone at this point.
Sorry, buddy.
If you looked at that photo quick,
you might not actually know anyone was in it.
But if you further inspected it, you might be like,
I think someone was clone stamped out of this.
Now how do we do that super fast?
'Cause that took, even with explaining,
about a minute's time.
How do we do that in five seconds?
That's where we would use content aware fill.
Instead of hitting S on our keyboard,
we're gonna hit L and it's gonna bring up the lasso.
All we're gonna do is draw an outline around Matti.
Try to do it as clean and tidy as you can.
I'm gonna do this a little fast
just for explanation purposes.
But we're going to go all the way around him.
All the way.
Connect that right there.
Now hit shift delete, that brings up content aware fill.
And then hit okay.
Gone.
Command D to get rid of it.
You don't gotta clone stamp anything.
Like, it almost always does a perfect job.
But it's important to still
inspect the area after the case.
'Cause, for instance, check out the ground here.
That looks a little weird.
But that's where we would clean up
the content aware fill with the clone stamp.
So now we hit S on our keyboard,
bring those brackets down and make it a little smaller.
And this is where we could clean up that weird kind of
soft, odd leftover remains that it left.
So after that content aware fill,
just going back in with the clone stamp,
just kind of clean up those edges.
Once you're done and finished, zoom out.
It should look something like this.
And to me, like you would never know
someone was in that photo front and center.
But that is one of the more difficult scenarios
when you're removing people from photos.
The easier stuff is something like this.
We've got lots of tourists
because it's a super awesome area.
They're all kind of gathered in chunks
taking photos of that waterfall,
which sometimes makes it easier.
But you could get rid of these people
in 30 seconds as well using content aware fill.
Again, same thing.
Hit L on your keyboard, draw around these guys
just hanging out by the river up to no good.
Started making...
Hit enter, done, and we clean up after the fact.
Let's get rid of this lone walker over here.
Just strayed from the group.
Shift delete, enter, peace, have a good one.
I bet we could even do this whole group of people
at the same time and then clean that up with the stamp.
So we will just, and like look,
I'm not even really putting much effort
into trying to make this lasso very accurate.
I'm just loosely tracing around this group of people.
We'll go here.
Once that's selected, shift delete, enter.
Peace out.
Now this is where we would fix
them with the clone stamp, right?
So we bring that bracket down
and we would pick this spot right here.
Copy it to there, copy it to there, copy it to there.
And that's all you're doing right across.
Remember, this is a small background detail of your photo.
Get that river water back in there a little bit.
Fix this spot which looked a little jank.
Fix that spot right there.
Boom.
And there you go.
Now that whole group of people from the left,
that was like eight or nine people, gone.
You could do the same thing for this railing.
It doesn't just have to be people.
If we were to just outline the railing like so.
We'll do a super fast job just right to here.
And then we'll come right back around.
Like this is so, so fast.
Shift delete, hit okay.
And next thing you know, that railing is pretty much gone.
Clean it up with the clone stamp.
Maybe fix that blown out sky using this tutorial.
Get rid of the rest of the people.
Throw a couple presets on there, edit that in Lightroom,
and then after the fact you are left with a photo like this.
That looks much better to me than the original.
But ooh that just gets me so excited.
So one of the most fun aspects of this as well
is digging back through those archives
that you thought were no good because they were filled
with people or things that you didn't know
how to get rid of at the time.
So have fun digging.
Like, hunt around, get those photos that you thought
were no good, throw 'em into Photoshop,
clean 'em up a little bit.
And you'd be surprised what you can come up with.
Anything in life, specifically photos and editing
and taking shots, the more you shoot,
the more you go out and photograph things,
the more you edit, the more you practice in Photoshop,
in Lightroom, practice Lightroom, practice lighting, studio,
anything like that, the more you do it, repetition,
the better you are going to be.
So if this is difficult for you, that's okay.
It's totally normal, it was difficult for me too.
But hopefully that tutorial was easy enough for you
to follow and I hope that you get something out of it.
And let's just say those Instagram photos
are gonna be looking a lot crisper.
Pumped to see them.
So thank you for watching.
Hit that like button if you liked this video.
Smash it if that's something that you're into.
2018 style.
Subscribe if you aren't already.
And I will see you guys, tomorrow's Tuesday,
so I'll see you tomorrow.
I think I need to start looking for an office.
Yeah.
I've got too much stuff.
Too much stuff and too many ideas.
I need some help.
I think I need an office.
Yeah.
I'm gonna go look for one right now.
See ya!