Sometimes, when manually selecting an object, a square-shaped brush would be useful, specifically for man-made objects that tend to be angular, like road signs and the like.
Hi David.
I would agree with you, if you are accurately and precisely painting shapes for example, the edge of building or other angular shaped objects.
Except, for best practices with the Removal Tool is overlapping your Subject meaning, paint around your Subject covering partly your Subject and whatever is behind it so, the Removal Tool can determine what is best to replace the Subject with.
Because, it’s like removing people from a scene if you don’t cover the whole person completely and you leave the hint of a person still there for example, the tip of a finger, strands of hair or even a person’s shadow then the Removal Tool will replace one person for another so, it stands to reason, that it would be a similar situation for buildings or angular shapes.
In other words, painting a big blob over the whole subject including any extremities and shadows is the best way to use the Removal Tool
Hope this helps
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It would still be nice to have when something you want to remove is very close to something you don’t want to remove. Or actually touching it Right now, the only way to do it is to blow the image way up and set the tool very small
Hi Gene.
Yes that would be nice but, tobe that precise you really need an Image Editor such as Photoshop even then, you’ll need two instances of the same image one with the Obstruction removed and one without for Compositing later
Because, even with the power of Photo Editors you still need to overlap your Selection for reason I’ve explained above to get the best possible results before bleeding the two images together.
There’s no denying Topaz Photo’s Remove Tool is great for general purpose Removal of Objects but, it simply hasn’t got the versatility of an Image Editor.
Hope this helps
You are missing the point you don’t need a 2 nd donor image with Topaz, it uses AI to extrapolate what to fill in the erased area with the area around the erased portion. Sometimes it works wel sometimes not it depends on how complex thimage is in and around the erase area.
I never mentioned creating two images in my Reply to you on the contrary, you’re referring to my reply to Gene who was asking about a situation when the obstruction you want to remove is very close to a part of the image you wish to retain.
I was merely suggesting with a situation like that then it’s probably better to have two instances of the same image one with the obstruction removed and one without because even with AI it would be nigh impossible to accomplish without smudging the boundaries between the two.
Therefore, having a second image as backup for retouching would greatly reduce the chances of failure for a task that would be extraordinarily difficult to achieve or virtually impossible even with AI
If I had an image without the object I want removed, I wouldn’t be using the removal tool.
@david_austin @gene-8240 @AND-E
Thanks everyone for the thoughtful discussion and for sharing your different perspectives and workflows; this is exactly the kind of exchange that helps improve the tools over time.
The suggestion for a square brush option (especially for angular, man-made objects) is a good one, and the points raised about precision when objects are close to areas you want to preserve are definitely valid use cases.
If you’d like this to be formally reviewed as a potential enhancement, we recommend posting (or upvoting, if it already exists) in the Topaz Photo Ideas section here:
Our development team actively monitors that section when evaluating feature improvements.
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