Select Object in PS 7

Hello... I have a photo i like opened in PhotoShop 7. At the bottom of the image, there's a Poland Spring water bottle i want to take out. My questions:

Is it possible to tell PS7 to select the outline of that bottle as an object?

Is it possible to take a part of the photo, say the wood pattern on the floor, and save that as a layer to fill with, so that when i select an outline (such as the water bottle), the stuff I'm filling it with isn't my background color, but the section of the image I've chosen- in this case the floor?


Thank you very much for any help!

Maybe you could copy a section of the floor after outlining it with the marqee tool and paste it once or multiple times over the bottle, or use the rubber stamp and clone a section or sections of the floor over the bottle.

Maybe you could post an example of the photo so we can offer advice on the most appropriate technique? There are many ways in Photoshop to remove and replace pixels, but it depends a lot on image content as to what the best method would be.


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Certainly. Thanks for suggesting that, MacBurg. This link to PhotoBucket should work.

Please note the Poland Spring bottle beneath his seat. If i take it out, i might want to take out the horizontal part of the brace, too? Since taking out the bottle will sever it, lol.

Sorry it's so big. I made it smaller, by inches and pixels, saved that, then saved that for web, but it's still the same size. Strange.

I don't have Photoshop on this machine, but I used the rubber stamp in a similar app, Enhance. I also stamped out the shiny white object on the far right at the bottom that was a distraction. Click the thumbnail.

That's very convincing! Thanks. No one would know.

So i started experimenting a bit in PS7 with the clone stamp tool. I option click to define the source point, then erase the bottle with brown texture from the floor. Mine looks messy though, because i'm "coloring" it in with a bunch of tiny brown scratches. I'm going to try and do it right, just so i can learn.

Thank you!

You should start by creating a blank layer above your background layer in Photoshop, everything you do to an image should have its own seperate layer, this way you can alter it at any stage or remove it completely. Once you have created a new layer, name it appropriately by double clicking on its original name, then select the "Clone Stamp" tool.

Now go up to the options bar and select from the "Sample" drop down "Current & Below" as your source layer. When you have sharp edges of other objects you don't want to affect with the clone stamp, first make a selection, which can be done using many methods, I just use quick mask mode and paint a selection with a brush, this lets me customize its edges and get the selection very exact. Now you can zoom in to about 300-400% and start cloning away, use an opacity of 20% or less, and instead of just clicking away, use long brush strokes as you paint over the area, keep resampling appropriate areas as your source for the stamp, and slowly you will replace the pixels original properties with new ones.

Below you can see the layer I have used to clone on, and this is shown in the image as the background is turned off. Theres many advantages to doing this on a seperate layer, the main one being instead of using history states to roll back if you are not happy with the results, is that you can just use the eraser to delete any cloned areas, then try again.



The result -




Only a quick job done here but making a few selections so the cloning wouldn't affect the chair legs at all made it very easy to just paint over the bottle and flare marks.

So I would advise that you create a new layer for everything you do in Photoshop, it gives you lot more freedom to get the results your looking for.



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MacBurg, thank you! I am going to go use your well thought out suggestions, dive in and try it myself. By the way your website is very well designed, and I spent some time poring over your work. The one with the man releasing the rainbow marked fish into the water is so striking. It's great. I love the color of that scotch in that first image in in your commercial section.

Thanks again also to Brown Study for sharing his talent. This is all very helpful.

Thanks for the comments, my website is getting a bit old now as I haven't had the time lately to shoot anything personal, however I have a few fishing expeditions lined up for November so will be getting some new images hopefully.

I was also going to add to my cloning advice that you try out different blending modes as well, particularly "Color" & "Luminosity", once you have selected the Clone Stamp tool for use, go up to the options bar and change the blending mode, it pays to experiment as more often than not using a different blending mode will give better results than using the tool in "Normal" mode. Most of the time I use it in "Luminosity" mode as for me it carries texture and detail a lot better than "Normal" mode. Just don't get carried away or you'll end up doing this -










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! Funny. Actually i kind of like the luminous example. But you're right; the fundamental vibe is quite different from the original. Might not make a client happy.

Seriously man, really beautiful work at that website. I assume you're making a living on this talent? Also, I have a thing for cluttered websites. Hating them. It's not what people need when they're surfing the web. The prize for worst, in my opinion, goes to godaddy. It is just atrocious. But then, I like to reduce, and then build up with some kind of aesthetic sense. They just wanna sell you more stuff. It's heartless.