Removing a Crane from the London Scene: Step-by-Step Tutorial

In this video, we’ll continue adding to our London scene, this time removing a crane from the background. Let’s begin by opening our file. We’ll go to File > Open, and we’ll open the 'crane.jpg' and click Open.

Next, let’s create a new layer from our background and rename it 'Crane Removed, ' then hit ENTER.

We’ll then retitle our background layer 'Crane Original' and hit ENTER.

Finally, we’ll lock the 'Crane Original' layer, change its visibility, and with 'Crane Removed' selected, we’ll save this file.

Go to File > Save As, and name the file 'Crane Removed, ' then hit ENTER.

We’re now ready to begin removing the crane. Looking at this image, we see one crane, and behind it, there’s another crane, as well as the sky. The goal is to remove the front crane from behind the back crane, as well as the background.

We can then use the crane in our London scene, but first, we need to remove the background layers.

The first thing we’ll do is create a mask below the Layers panel. With this mask, we’ll remove the background contents.

Let’s start by using a new tool.

We’ll select the Magic Wand Tool. With the Magic Wand Tool selected, it works by sampling part of our image when we click, and then selects all pixels within the tolerance of that sample.

In the options bar, we can see that our tolerance is currently set to 90, meaning we’ll select all pixels within a tolerance of 90 from where we select.

Let’s deselect by hitting CTRL D, then try selecting a pixel from the crane.

As we can see, it now selects pixels within 90 of where we selected on the crane.

Let’s hit CTRL D again.

If we reduce the tolerance in the options bar, we’ll highlight it and change it to 10, then hit ENTER.

Now, if we click, we’ll see that it selects fewer pixels because it selects pixels with only a tolerance of 10.

We can deselect by hitting CTRL D, then select again, and we’ll see there are only pixels within 10 of our tolerance.

I’ll hit CTRL D, and now let’s look at our image to figure out how we’re going to remove the background contents.

To do this, we’ll add to our selection using the Magic Wand Tool to remove the background color first, and then we’ll remove the crane behind.

Using the Magic Wand Tool, let’s increase the tolerance to about 30, then hit ENTER.

Now, if we click in the middle between the lighter and the bluer, click right about here, we’ll see that we get a good portion of our image.

Additionally, we can continue adding to our selection by holding Shift and clicking, and on top, Shift and click again. We’ll see that we’ve selected many of the pixels around the crane.

However, we don’t currently have any pixels selected within the crane.

To fix this, we can uncheck Contiguous.

With Contiguous unchecked, when we click, we’ll see that it pulls all pixels from within the image.

Let’s hit CTRL D to deselect, then bump the tolerance up to about 45, then hit ENTER.

Now, when we click in the middle of our image, we’ll see that it pulls pixels both on the outside and inside of the crane.

In the future, we’ll take care of the corners within our selection.

Let’s zoom in on our image.

If we scroll up, we simply want to check that no parts of our image are mistakenly included in the selection before we remove it.

Looking at the top, it looks like part of the pixels from the base of the crane have been selected.

Let’s zoom in and bring them back using the Polygonal Lasso Tool.

We’ll select it, then go to our options bar and make sure 'Subtract from Selection' is selected.

We’ll draw a polygon around the pixels, and we’ve now removed them from the sky selection.

Depending on where you clicked on the image, you may have other parts of the crane that were accidentally included in the selection.

I’ll look closely to see if there are any areas that have been mistakenly included in the selection.

Looking at common places like these signs, they have pixels similar to the background.

I’ll make sure they’re clean, and if necessary, I can add them back.

This section on the right-hand side is an area we want to subtract from the selection.

I’ll create a polygon and remove it from the selection.

Additionally, this sign right here: we’ll click and drag a polygon around everything, and now it’s been subtracted from the selection.

I’ll scroll down and select this piece right here. Again, you may need to add other pieces such as parts of the sign or lighter-colored objects.

We’ll leave out some of these sections since they belong to the sky.

However, I have this section here.

I’ll add it back in, and let’s scroll down the crane.

The rest of this looks good.

Now, I’ll zoom back out, and once you’ve finished adding all the pieces that need to be added back to the selection, we’ll use the Quick Selection Tool in the gallery with the Magic Wand Tool.

We’ll add the top pixels, and instead of working on the bottom sections, we’ll add them later.

We’re now ready to fill the background with black.

I’ll go back to the Layers panel and make sure the mask is selected, then right-click, click Fill, and hit OK, making sure the contents are black.

We’ve now removed all the sky from the image.

I’ll hit CTRL D, then remove these bottom sections.

We can do this with the Paintbrush Tool. Making sure our fill color is black, I’ll right-click to increase the size and simply click and drag over, adding transparency.

We’ve now removed the sky, so let’s save our work by hitting CTRL S on the keyboard. In the next video, we’ll begin working on the crane.

See you there!