Step 1: Intro  |  Step 2: Brush/Pencil  |  Step 3: Spot Healing Brush  |  Step 4: Healing Brush  |  Step 5: Patch  |  Step 6: Content-Aware Move  |  Step 7: Content Aware Fill  |  Step 8: Clone  |  Step 9: Combining Tools  |  Exercise
Exercise
Brush/Pencil Tool

In this Step, we will use the Brush/Pencil Tool to make very basic adjustments to our image. The Brush and Pencil Tools work in the same way, and either tool can actually be used on this Step, though I will specifically ask you to use the Brush Tool because it has a softer edge and generally makes items in a photograph blend in better than the Pencil Tool. If we were working with a graphic such as a company logo or billboard, then the Pencil Tool would likely be more appropriate because it draws with a hard edge. The Brush/Pencil Tool works just like a paintbrush. Whatever part of the image you paint on is replaced with the currently selected color. Let's start by selecting a color from our image that we can use to begin removing people.

  1. Press D on the keyboard to set black as the Foreground color and white as the Background color...
  2. Click the Eyedropper Tool...
    This tool allows us to click on a color in our image to select it
  3. Point at the area of the image indicated below...
  4. Press and hold the Alt key and roll the mouse wheel up to zoom in on the area...

    Keep in mind that you are currently reading a website, so the images you see will not be of the same quality that you should be looking at in Photopea
  5. Release the Alt key and click once where the arrow is pointing below to select that color...
  6. Click the Brush Tool...
  7.  Locate the Brush Tool options bar at the top of the Photopea window...

When you select a tool in Photopea, the options bar will change to give you a bunch of options to customize that tool. Let's choose a brush with a soft edge to allow our colors to blend in.

  1.  Click the Brush Present Picker drop-down arrow...
    This will open the Brush options...
  2. Click the Soft Mechanical 5 pixels brush (red arrow above)
  3. Press Esc to exit the Brush options window
  4.  Draw over the people in the shadow...
    To remove them...

    Be careful not to draw too large of an area with the brush - remember that you are drawing with a solid color over and area that is actually a combination of many different colors, so just click on the people, don't click and drag
  5. Press Ctrl+1 to zoom out to 100%...
  6. Use the Brush Tool to remove people and objects from other areas of the image that are in shadow...

    Remember to reselect the color using the Eyedropper Tool in each shadow because the shadows are not all the same color

Let's save our work up to this point.
  1. Click File and then click Save as PSD...
  2. Save the image in the Remove Objects folder as remove.psd

Using the Brush/Pencil Tool is one of the quickest and easiest ways to remove an object from an image. The problem is that it only works in situations similar to what we did - when the object is being removed from an area that is all pretty much the same color. In the next Step, we will let Photopea handle removing an object by extending the surrounding area to cover the object.

Step 1: Intro | Step 2: Brush/Pencil | Step 3: Spot Healing Brush | Step 4: Healing Brush | Step 5: Patch | Step 6: Content-Aware Move | Step 7: Content Aware Fill | Step 8: Clone | Step9: Combining Tools  |  Exercise