Problems with inpainting

[Ola]

Problems with inpainting

For a few days, the Inpainting Tool worked perfect.  Not so today. When I selected an object in the image it disappears admittedly when I painedt it, but instead of the expected background there is a double exposure of a completely different part of the image. What am I doing wrong?

Ola

[JFisher]

Hi Ola,

The results can vary depending on the data you brushed over. If you don't get the result you want at first try, try to paint over the same area again or just undo and try again.

Would it be possible to provide a copy of the file you are working with so I can test this?

J

[Ola]

Hi,

 

I hope this is is what you wanted. The file is coming.

/ Ola

[Ola]

And this is the file I am working with...

 

/ Ola

[Ola]

 

I have followed your suggestions, but the results are equally bad, or on the contrary, it gets worse when I paint a second time.

[MEB]

Hi Ola,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

The object you are trying to remove covers a considerable area of the background, making it difficult to find enough data around to cover/rebuild what's being "hidden" by the object.

To get better results try to "inpaint" the object as tight as possible. It should perform a little better, however in this case, you will always have to retouch it manually afterwards.

 

Here's the result i got using only the Inpainting Tool (single passage):

 

[Ola]

Hi MEB,

 

 

Thank you for your detailed reply. I will continue to work with other file hoping for better results.

/ Ola

[evtonic3]

It seems you want to cover the sign with what you would like the app to replace it with the actual background. I see it as you trying to focus on the two men and the sign is merely a distraction so you want to get rid of it from the photo. So why don't you crop out the sign and leave the two men, I mean that is what you after right? Focus on the men?

[Ola]

Yes, I realize that I need to crop the image. From the beginning, however, I had hoped to keep a bit more of the surroundings.

[HeartsEase]

I had the same experience--I was working with a landscape and wanted to remove a person from it.  When I selected the person, it removed part of her but not all of her.  And in addition to that, the part that was removed was replaced by an out of synch portion of the background.  I tried to select the rest of her and wound up with a mess.  So I wound up undoing it all, going to another program and using a cloning tool, which worked but not well.  Looking at the tutorial, it didn't seem that the person teaching the tutorial selected that tight a selection, and it worked for her?  Hoping to hear a good way to use the inpainting tool.

[evtonic3]

The inpainting tool is not capable of removing and replacing a large object with the background that should be behind it. If it is a complex background that has all sorts of objects (cars, people, houses, buildings, whatever) and you want to remove the object, you can't expect it to line up all the things up perfect. You will always have to use cloning along with the inpaint tool to complete your image. It's not a magical brush. Cloning in Photo works well, you shouldn't have to go to another app to to do regular cloning. Sorry you had a bad experience but you have to understand the tools limitations. 

[anon1]

Event professionals have to use the standard paint brush in some cases to recover/ create information that´s just not in the picture (but in the mind of the artist/ retoucher).

[HeartsEase]

I'm sorry but when I see an entire telephone pole removed (yes, like magic) in a photo where it is not only in front of the sky but also in an area of complex greenery, it makes me believe that I could also remove a person in a quite small area of a photo in an effective way.  I also saw a person removed effectively this way in one of the tutorials.  Perhaps I've approached using inpainting in the wrong way (though it all I did was to try to duplicate what I saw done in the video tutorial).  I watched the long hour plus video and also the inpainting tutorial, and I saw done what I was trying to do.  I'm admittedly new at using Photo, and I'll continue to work toward what I want.  This was not a complex background, just some greenery and a fence.  I have a lot to learn, I know.

[manu schwendener]

> remove a person in a quite small area of a photo

 

Could you post the image?

 

---

 

Yes, the inpainting tool works like magic - in a lot of cases! For me, this feature alone would be worth the price of Affinity Photo.

 

But sometimes I can't get it to do what I'm trying to fix - although it looks easy to my eyes. I've found that in these cases being able to replace a certain colour with another one would really help me (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10190-photo-replace-one-colour-with-another-like-red-eye-removal-but-with-colour-picker).

 

For Ola's picture that would mean being able to replace the white of the panel with either the blue of the moustache or with one of the greens from the surroundings; the panel would still be there (as would the black writing), but it would be more discreet.

[HeartsEase]

Here's the image--not a good one, I just wanted to try out the inpainting tool on an image I didn't care about.

 

 

Thank you for the examples--In the last one, it should be (should have been) relatively easy--did it not work?

[manu schwendener]

> I just wanted to try out the inpainting tool on an image I didn't care about.

 

Ah - then I won't spend a lot of time on it, either.

 

What I did

- make the radius of the inpainting brush quite small

- remove one part of the person at a time: first the head, then one piece of leg etc.

- important: don't paint over the fence

 

When it doesn't work, go back a step with cmd + z and try again.

 

I think it would help you if you tried with a less complex picture first, for example a branch of a tree you want to remove from the blue sky or in your example picture remove the window of the barn (this can be done with one click if you make the brush radius big enough to cover the whole window at once).

[A_B_C]

Very good description, Manuela … it worked the same way for me …  :)

[HeartsEase]

I do understand using the cloning tool, and I'm thinking of the inpainting tool in the same way, but on a larger scale.  Maybe I just can't think of it that way.  Anyway, here's what I did with the cloning tool in Aperture on this image--it's a bit rough but you can see what I mean.  I cloned the greenery, the fence, the grey pathway, and other small stuff.  I thought I could do it in one fell swoop with Photo.  Maybe not?

[manu schwendener]

Thank you, A_B_C :-)

 

 

Came back to add: I also find Document - Add snapshot really practical: I use it when a tricky inpainting step went well. If I then screw up going further I can come back to how it was the last time I liked it.

[HeartsEase]

I just did the photo below using the pinpointing brush, removing the bee from the flower (which I really wouldn't do) and it worked fine, so I guess I just have to get more familiar with what I can and can't do.  

[HeartsEase]

Sorry, the spellcheck doesn't like inpainting, but you know what I meant!  And thank you for all the suggestions and help!

[manu schwendener]

[you can edit your posts - I use that a lot ;) ]

[Madame]

I just did the photo below using the pinpointing brush, removing the bee from the flower (which I really wouldn't do) and it worked fine, so I guess I just have to get more familiar with what I can and can't do.  

Hi, I'm impressed with the inpainting brush, but it has a mind of it's own.

 

It samples from the pictures, and it can't paint in things that aren't there.

If you look closely on the picture of the bee and the flower, it has sampled from the part of the flower just below the bee,

It has spread parts of the bees legs around, it's just not so easy to see.

 

It's quite obvious when there is a fence in the picture and it doesn't get it right. The straight lines "sticks out" when they aren't so straight anymore.

When there is greenery it camouflages itself.

 

You just have to practice and soon you'll get an understanding of how it works.

[HeartsEase]

I think I do understand how it works, and perhaps I expect too much--for instance, if the fence is on either side of the object to be removed and some of the fence is selected, I would have expected that it would extrapolate that the fence would be continuous, and place it there.  Obviously not.  I was able to do that manually but then I knew where it was supposed to go.  So you're right, I need to learn what it's capabilities are and work within them.

 

Thanks for your comments and help!  I'm VERY new with Photo, still going through the tutorials, and trying to recreate what the tutorial does.  I have Aperture and the MacPhun extensions, but not Photoshop, so I'm a bit intimidated with the learning curve.

[Madame]

You are welcome, HeartsEase!

Yes it's a learning curve, but it's a fun curve.. ;)

Don't be intimidated, just be sure that when you export your pictures you rename them, then you won't overwrite the original, and nothing is ruined.