One of Digital Photo‘s most popular stories last year was on how to easily remove a fence in Photoshop. That tutorial was led by Anthony Morganti and he showed you how to zap the fence using Photoshop’s Quick Mask tool.
The technique comes in handy if you’ve captured photos of animals at a zoo or enclosure and want to create an unobstructed wildlife shot. But there’s more than one way to get rid of a fence using Photoshop.
In the below software how-to, Christian Mohrle of The Phlog Photography shows you how to remove a fence with the Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop.
“I never really tried taking pictures of animals but had the opportunity two weeks ago in a big wildlife park in Norway,” Mohrle explains. “For this shot I mainly wanted to get rid of the fence, add some more sharpness and adjust the colors a little bit to get some more orange and blue tones. All of this was done in Photoshop. Raw adjustments were done in the Camera Raw editor.”
Step 1: Basic Raw Adjustments
“First, I changed the profile to Adobe Landscape for a bit more saturation,” he notes. “Next, I dropped the highlights to get back more details. For more contrast I dropped the shadows but also slightly raised the blacks for a ‘softer’ look. For the sharpness I increased texture and clarity. Finally, I added some saturation and vibrance.”
Step 2: Color Grading
“I started in the hue tab first. To adjust the fur and the eyes I dropped the yellow hue, giving it more orange color. Also, I increased the red hue slightly. In the saturation tab I increased the orange, yellow and blue saturation. Then, in the luminance tab I carefully raised the orange luminance to give the fur some more brightness. For the split toning I simply added a blue tone to the mid tones.”
Step 3: Photoshop Fence Removal
“The first thing to do here was to get rid of the fence. I simply used the spot healing brush and brushed along it very, very carefully. This worked pretty well, but for the eyes I used the clone stamp tool to get a good result. Finally, I added a little more contrast using a levels adjustment layer.”
