Clearing up Crowded Places


This could work to

  1. Remove noise
  2. Remove people from in front of crowed buildings
  3. Remove rain
  4. Remove stars from star trail photography
  5. Remove cars when a highway is in your photo

Steps in the process

  1. Take 3 or more photos of your subject.  Try for an odd number of photos.  Either use a tripod or be as careful as possible to take each photo with the same exact composition.
  2. Load your photographs into Lightroom.  
  3. Select each of the photographs from step 1 and open them in Photoshop 5 or later.  .
  4. Use the command "File -- scripts  -- load into stack" to bring up the "Load Layers:" dialog box.
  5. Click "Add Open Files" to select your photos.  Alternatively:  The photos can be loaded into Photoshop directly from your harddrive using the Browse button.
  6. Check both "Attempt to Automaatically Align Source Images" and "Create Smart Object after Loading Layers" check boxes.
  7. Click OK  Photoshop will stack your photos into layers then bundle the layers into a single smart object.
  8. Use the command "Layer  --  Smart Objects  -- Stack Mode" to bring up a choice of statistics.
  9. Click on "median"   This should result in clearing up your photos.

Eacmple

The following three photos are taken of the San Xavier mission.  Each have people in front of the mission.  The fourth photo is the result of the "Clearing up Crowded Places" technique.







And finally