How To Delete Your Pal From a Pic

[Jimbaux is listening to “All Fall Down” by One Republic.]

Yo, yo, yo, it’s your boy Jimbaux!  Y’all had enough of those cows?  I’m taking you today not only back to trains but back to Louisiana, the homeland, for a quick lesson on getting your foamie out of a shot.

The quick background is that this is Canadian National Railway train M-319 moving eastward across the Bonnet Carré Spillway just before stopping for a pickup in Destrehan on 7 December 2008, which happened to be the last day that I ever ate at a McDonald’s in the state of Louisiana.  Most of the traffic on this train originates on the chemical plants along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge and is headed northbound.

Comme ci, Comme ça

Have a look at our final result here, dudes.

Cool enough for you?  Now, that’s not actually how the scene presented it self to me, but it would have been had one of my pals not been out with me.  Then again, since I was showing him around, I wouldn’t have been out at all had it not been for him.  Anyway, here’s what the shot looked like before what you see above.

Notice anything different?  (If you can’t figure it out, see the end of the train in both presented versions of the image.)  Yes, it’s the same shot, mes amis, and my pal was standing in front of me.  You’d never have known had I not shown you!

How To Do It

Removing the friend from the picture in this case is easy, which is also removes any elements of inappropriateness to doing this.  I say that partially because I know that there are some judgmental and ‘puritanical’ (read -> unimaginative and fearful) folks out there who will object to what I’ve done here.  (Enjoy yourselves on your preachy, high-horses.)

The simple answer here is that the ground, the trees, and the sky near where the friend is standing are homogeneous along horizontal linear axes, making a cloning possible.  This is like a skin graft.

You see the little circle at left.  That is the area that I am cloning and then pasting where Bob is standing.

That is all!

Jimbaux