Help With Coverup

[LManer311]

Hey guys! This is my first post but I'm stuck. I've been editing with Photoshop for a while and can normally get my way through any issue I've had. But not so with this. I have the attached image that I like but I want to remove the words that are spray painted on the wall. Basically I want to keep the blue background but make it still look faded and like spray painted brick.

I don't want someone to edit this photo for me, just give me an idea as to how to accomplish this. I've tried the color replacement tool as well as the color replacement adjustment. I've also tried the clone stamp and pattern stamp tools. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!!

 

[ibclare]

I think what I would do is find a brick wall texture very similar to the one you like, transform it t get size and perspective rigth. Select the figure and place it one the layer above. At least that would be the first thing I would try. Attempting to clone out the words is a difficult and time-consuming task if you want to retain the brick texture.

To keep the blue part of the wall, you can just make a selection with the marquee or polygonal lasso, copy it to another layer. Then place a layer adjustment on the wall selection. Layer>hue/saturation, check the colorize box and move the hue around till you get the blue. Play with blend modes and opacities to replace some of the brick color of the layer below.

When you make your marquee or lasso selection, go to select>save selection. That way if you want to use the same selection, you won't have to try to make it match. Now why might you want to do that? If you try the first method and are not satisfied with the way you have tried to get some brick color through the color layer (try changing the hue adjustment and see if that helps first), you may want to try one more thing.

Make another selection from the original and place it on the top of the layer stack. Again, try different blend modes and opacities and see if this helps.

I hope this gives you an idea. If it still isn't working, come back and say so and one of us will have more suggestions for you.

 

[LManer311]

Thank you for your quick response! I will definitely give that a try. I was thinking something to that effect but I was hoping there was a special tool I was not familiar with. Thanks again! I'll let you know what I come up with!

 

[IamSam]

I was thinking the same thing as Clare on this one. Do you still have the original PSD? And, if so, did you preserve all the layers?

It looks as though the BG has been replaced in the original. Like Clare stated, add a new brick wall duplicating size, perspective, lighting, etc...

Take a look at some of these tutorials that might help you in getting the blue background to look spray painted.

https://www.google.com/#q=photoshop+graffiti

 

[LManer311]

Here's what I came up with...thanks again for your suggestions! It's not perfect but it's about as close as I can get ATM.

 

[LManer311]

It looks as though the BG has been replaced in the original.

Strangely enough, this is a untouched photo. I was just as surprised as you probably are

 

[Tom Mann]

One trick that I use to get a more realistic faded paint look is to realize that:

(a) Natural fading is never uniform - it's always patchy - more faded in some areas and less faded in others.

(b) Where the paint has faded, the viewer sees more of the underlying brick color and texture.

There is a simple way to simulate both of these effects. I placed a second copy of your image on its own layer and selected the sign area. I then sampled the color of the bricks not covered by the sign, and used the paint bucket tool to flood fill the area of the sign with that color (ie, color blending mode, so you get the new hue and saturation, but the original luminosity pattern). I also applied a light texture (sandstone) to this layer.

I then used the "render / clouds" tool to fill the mask for the "completely faded" layer with a random pattern to simulate the non uniform, patchy character of natural fading. If you don't like the patchiness that you get from the "clouds" tool, you can just paint in some random areas on the layer mask.

You can compare the result of the above to the original by clicking the static thumbnail below to see the animated GIF. View it low magnification to see the patchy aspect of the fading, as well as at 1:1 magnification to see things like there is less brick texture where paint is "covering" it.

Just a thought. HTH,

Tom

PS - I thought that the shadowing on the man was too extreme for good reproduction and that he was a bit OOF, so I tweaked these aspects as well.