Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Tidying Up with Scene Cleaner

With Scene Cleaner, you can eliminate unwanted people or elements in your photos. Think of all those travel magazine photos that show famous sights in their lonely glory, without any tourists hanging around to clutter up the scene. If you've ever waited patiently for what seems like hours, trying to get a shot of a famous landmark, only to give up as busloads of tourists arrive, you'll appreciate Scene Cleaner.

Or you've probably had this experience when showing your vacation photos: "Here's a shot of Jodi and Taylor at the rim of the Grand Canyon…Oh, those other people—no, no idea who they are. They just got in front of the camera somehow." Scene Cleaner was made to fix photos like those.

Scene Cleaner is easy to use, but you'll get better results if you can plan ahead when taking your photos. To get a people-less landscape, you need to shoot multiple photos from nearly the same angle. All the areas you want to feature should be uninhabited in at least one photo. So, for instance, if you can get one shot of the Statue of Liberty where all the tourists are in the left side of her crown and one where they're in the right side, you're all set. Then, to use Scene Cleaner to create a more perfect world:

1. In the Editor, open the photos you want to combine.

   In addition to being taken from nearly the same vantage point, the images should have similar exposures. If a cloud was passing, for instance, so that one photo is bright and one is shadowy, then you'll have ...