How do I blend parts of layers?

[Will James]

Hi all,

Basically I went to a car owners club meet yesterday and as it was so bright and sunny I took some bracketed shots with my 500d. On some of them there is a main road in the background and in some of the 3 shots there is a car passing by causing a really distracting blur.

I'm just wondering how I could clone the empty road from one of the other pictures and paste it into the image that has the car passing by on it....it kind of ruins the photo? I captured in 3 brackets so there are all taken is exactly the same place, meaning that I'd imagine this should be fairly straightforward?

I have CS5 but lack in certain aspects

Many thanks,

Will

 

[jon ryan]

Hard to say without seeing the pics- can you post them here? I'm sure some people will want a go. They love a challenge around here!

Try placing one shot over the other with a layer mask between them, then `paint out` the bits you don't want. This will only work if the shots can be perfectly aligned, ie taken from a tripod with no camera movement between exposures.

Otherwise, there may be another solution. There usually is

 

[Paul MR]

This might be of interest...
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/russell-b...lando/mike-hales-mode-and-stack-modes-panels/

 

[J.D.]

I'd start by trying to blend layers as you would to replace a sky. This is quite a good tutorial:

http://www.johnrobinsonphoto.com/articles/blending-exposures.php

 

[nickshek]

Layer masks are your solution here, what Jon said!

 

[Will James]

Thanks everyone for the replies, that's a great help

I took them handheld so they are almost identically positioned, hardly any difference between the captures so I will try to align them first

 

[Forbiddenbiker]

You can move layers about using the transform tool ...or various types thereof.

Click on the layer (not the mask on a layer) then -edit/transform, then move it about, scale it or whatever.

Big task first time round, twill probably take you some time.

 

[redhed17]

I always use the Photomerge feature in Photoshop to align the images. It aligns the images and puts layer masks on the layers where it is hiding and revealing each layer, but once it has aligned them you can either delete the masks and then put masks back on the layers or fill in the mask to in effect reset them to do your own masks. It's a lot quicker at aligning than I am. Btw, there are few different options for Photomerge, but I'd try Collage first.

 

[wippers]

You may be able to clone another part of the road that is empty of cars and copy it over the cars you want to remove. If it's in the BG then it shouldn't be noticeable if you do it carefully. I've done this loads of times with great results. Without seeing the image, it's hard to say though.