[Video Tutorial] How to remove an object from a photo

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2018-05-31 09:54:46

Find out how to make small imperfections or entire objects disappear with the magical Repair tool in Pixelmator Pro.

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2019-02-18 21:41:52

This is a great tool and I have used it several times. Is there documentation on more detailed usage of this feature? How to set the optimum brush size? Increasing the view size of the image prior to repair. How can layers be used to optimize this feature?
Thanks
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2019-02-19 09:30:29

There's some more info about this tool in the Pixelmator Pro Help manual right here: http://help.pixelmator.com/pixelmator-pro/1.3/#733

As a general rule, the brush size and the zoom level don't have any effect on the results of the tool. Everything depends on the shape of the mask (the shape of the area to be repaired indicated by the yellow overlay). Because there's a very complicated algorithm behind the tool that is a little bit magic, there's an element of randomness. While the exact same mask will always give the exact same result, small differences in the mask can have more significant differences on the final result. What that means is — if you don't get the result you're looking for, try undoing and repairing the area again.

As for layers, you can turn on the Sample All Layers option and repair on an empty layer if you'd like to have a more nondestructive workflow. This is also covered in the help manual.
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2019-10-08 18:45:48

My impression is that if you are using something well defined like the car in the video it works well. However, I attempted to remove wispy smoke from a photo and found that in spite of being very careful there was as much chance of increasing the smoke as there was of removing it.
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2019-10-11 09:28:02

by strategist 2019-10-08 18:45:48 My impression is that if you are using something well defined like the car in the video it works well. However, I attempted to remove wispy smoke from a photo and found that in spite of being very careful there was as much chance of increasing the smoke as there was of removing it.
The tool is currently trained to remove objects against some sort of background. The background can be complex, like a forest or some fields or some buildings, but it has to detect a pattern of some kind and it has to detect a complete object to be removed. Things get tricky when you try to remove an object at the edge of another object because then it's difficult for the algorithm to see where one object ends and another begins as well as what is part of the foreground and what's part of the background. Hope that sheds some light on the issue!