Power-Line Vanishing Trick

The Clone Stamp in Photoshop Elements is a pretty good tool for removing unsightly wires from your scenes. Photoshop 7 and CS have an amazing piece of magic called the Patch tool. Either way, wires be gone!

Wires, wires, everywhere wires. Most folks might not realize just how many wires are strung
around the landscape. But if you have a photographer's eye and enjoy shooting landscapes,
you understand what I'm talking about. It can be challenging to find an interesting roadside
shot that doesn't involve wires. Have you ever found that nearly perfect shot: nice
landscape elements, beautiful colors, intense sky, and some magic light illuminating the entire
scene? You hit the brakes, grab the digicam, and start clicking the shutter button. It's then
you notice the wires crisscrossing the horizon. What do you do? Lament the unspoiled vistas
of times past and give up?
Keep shooting! There's a Photoshop CS tool to save the day: the Patch tool. Prior to
Photoshop 7 and still in Photoshop Elements, the Clone Stamp (rubber stamp) was the savior
of choice to eliminate distracting elements. Even though it's amazing, photographers found it
difficult to match subtle tone differences, in skies, for example, where power wires often
reside. Then, Adobe added the Patch tool to enhance this type of retouching. And what a
good addition the Patch tool is. It's faster and much better at blending subtle tones.
In this example, I was out for a roadside walk and heard the geese before I saw them. They
were headed my way, in formation, on their way to their next feeding grounds. I started
shooting, looking through the viewfinder, following them with the lens. After I loaded the
images onto the computer, however, I noticed that some shots included unsightly utility
wires, as shown in Figure 6-11.
Figure 6-11. Distracting wires, marring the shot's appeal








Now, I have a few options for dealing with this image. I could just crop the wires out. But I
don't want to do that, because I would lose precious sky real estate that I want to preserve.
When there's motion in a composition, it's best to leave some room in front of the motion so
that it has a place to go. If I were to crop out the sky in front of the geese, you would
experience a feeling of claustrophobia when viewing the picture. Subconsciously, you might
think, "they don't have any place to fly."
If I were working in Photoshop Elements instead of CS, the Clone Stamp would be the tool of
choice. You'd think that those little ole wires would be easy to remove, but blue-sky tones
are subtle, so they're difficult to retouch seamlessly.
The trick with the Clone Stamp is to Option-click (to choose the area to clone from) as close
to the wire as possible, as shown in Figure 6-11, to match your tones. Sometimes, this takes
a bit of trial and error, but it can be done. In fact, for years, that was our only option.
But if you have Photoshop 7 or CS, select the Patch tool, which is located in the Healing
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