Any photoshop experts out there?

Originally Posted by VolatileParsley

There are a number of tools in the Photoshop palette that you can use to do this kind of thing: Clone Stamp, Spot Healing Brush, Healing Brush, and the Patch Tool.

It's actually fairly straight-forward but as I said I'm no expert, even though photography is a big hobby of mine. As Nick has said, you basically use the tools mentioned to clone other similar parts of the image, e.g. the track, and then try to blend them together so it doesn't look too obvious that something's been removed.

I've only really started to pick up Photoshop recently. A couple of months ago I would have thought it easier to dress up like Nick, re-spray my bike blue and find an empty racetrack to re-create the shot. But I can't achieve the same lean angles so that would never have worked.

As with most things, it's amazing how much and how quickly you learn when you try it out for yourself.

Another technique when painting stuff out of images is to use a clean plate. The problem with clone stamp and friends is you have to use it sparingly, otherwise you end up with obvious pattern repeats.

On trackday pics for example, if you have another pic of you on the same corner with no-one behind you then you can lay one over the other. Warp the 'clean' background image so that it lines up with your foreground and the create a layer mask on the foreground layer. Then you can just paint through the clean background via the layer mask. If you make a mistake, then just paint it out of the mask. Easy and with no repetition!

Obviously this technique requires a second image, but you would be amazed what you can colour-correct and warp to fit.

In my avatar, I painted out the number plate, but you can actually see the whole tail-tidy, undertray and rear shock as it is from a different image (well, in the full sized version )