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Tutorial #1: Removing Logos & Trademarks using the Clone, Patch, or Heal tools
In this tutorial, our resident Digital Imager Tony will teach you 3 ways how to erase logos that seem to be well, just about everywhere!
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- For copyright reasons, logos and trademarks should be removed from all imagery. Every time you open an image, try to locate recognizable logos and trademarks on any possible area. Places notoriously famous for logos include shirts, glasses, mobile phone (cellphones), watches, shoes and they pop up just about everywhere really.
- Let's scrutinize the image below carefully, oooh, is that a logo on the cellphone? (Look at the area highlighted by the red box)
 • Fig. 1 Logo on the mobile phone
- First let's switch to full screen mode for easier navigation, you can quickly switch between the standard screen mode to full screen mode by clicking on the buttons shown below or by repeatedly pressing the shortcut key - "F". Pressing the F key cycles between different viewing modes.
 
• Standard Mode  • Full Screen Mode With Menu 
• Full Screen Mode
- In this tutorial, we'll use the "Full screen mode with menu" viewing mode. Now let's zoom into the mobile phone to see the logo closely.
(Tony: I believe you'd know a lot of ways to zoom but here is a personal tip from me. Zoom in by holding Command+Space for Mac or CTRL+Space for Windows, you'll see your mouse cursor turn into a magnifying glass and you could zoom into your desired area by clicking your mouse. To zoom out, just hold down Space+ALT and and you'll get a negative magnifying glass cursor just left click on your mouse to zoom out.)
- Before we start editing, it is always a good idea to duplicate the background layer of our original image (short cut keys: Mac: Command+J / Windows: CTRL+J) so that we can work in the new layer while keeping the original copy underneath. In the event we make any mistakes on the edits, we will always have the original layer that we can always fall back on.
- There are several ways to remove the logo. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you three tried, tested and proven methods to do this.
- Clone Stamp Tool
It is ideal to use the Clone Stamp when the surrounding area of the region you intend to erase is very similar to the area to be erased. How it works is by sampling a surrounding region and when the cursor over the affected area and the Clone Stamp tool is applied, it actually copies image information from the sampled area to the target area. Therefore, it is aptly named, the Clone Stamp tool. It basically clones the sampled area to the target area. Let's try this out:
- Select the Clone Stamp Tool on the tools palette (short cut: S), press and hold the ALT key to turn your clone brush cursor into sampling cursor. Sample a desired area by clicking your mouse. 
- Release ALT to return to the clone brush cursor, click your mouse while holding down the Command button (only Mac users) to trigger the brush option in order to adjust the brush size and hardness of your brush edge. For Windows users, just click the right click of your mouse and you'll get the option. (Tony: You can also use the short cuts "[" and "]" to adjust the brush size; and use "SHIFT+[" and "SHIFT+]" to adjust its hardness.)
- After you get the desired brush size, start brushing on the logo.
- Carefully click, hold and glide the cursor over the logo. You'll see the logo area get covered up by the sampled area.
- Keep brushing until you get the logo removed totally.
- Be aware of the surface you're cloning, conduct a check by zooming in to see if the details and textures match one to another and are consistent.
- Always remember not to set the hardness too soft or you might blur off the detail around that area.
- Patch Tool
The concept of the patch tool is simple. What it does is it tries to patch over the target selection with another selection that looks about the same (visually that is!). Basically, you make a selection on the area you wish to touch up, then click and hold in the middle of your selection and drag to another area where you want your selection to look like, simple and straightforward. The prerequisite here is that you need to have an large area where you can take the source patch from. Follow these steps to explore the patch tool:
- Select the patch tool from the tools palette as shown in Fig. 13. (short cut key: J, or if you can't seem to get to the Patch Tool with the “J” key, try “Shift+J” to switch around until you get the tool.)
- Now, let's select the logo. (Tony: Some of you might find making the selection a bit difficult especially for irregular shapes. Now what you can do here is to hold down the ALT key while making the selection. You'll find that the selection method now behaves like the polygonal lasso tool.) 
• Fig. 3: Hold Alt while making your selection
- Make sure your patch option is set at "Source" and the "transparent" check box is not checked. 
- Click on your selection and drag it to a suitable area, release to apply the patch. 
• Fig. 4: Click and drag your selection - You'll see the logo area is totally covered up by the area you drag to; and the edge of your selection is automatically blended in with the surrounded textures.
• Fig. 5: After patched - Be careful when you make your initial selection. It's best not to select too close to the margin of a discrete area.
- In our example, watch what happens when I select too close to the white edge above the logo and then apply the patch. The color from the lighter discrete area will break out and blend with the darker color as shown below. This is definitely undesirable, so be careful!
- Healing Brush Tool
 The Healing Brush tool can be best thought of to have incorporated the best features of both the Clone Stamp and the Patch Tool. Operating the Healing Brush is similar to using the Clone Stamp tool, whereby you'll have to select a sample area and carefully brush it into the part you wish to repair. What makes the Healing Brush tool different from the Clone Stamp tool is that the Healing Brush Tool works like Patch Tool - the pattern you are brushing over will try to blend in with the surrounding area, hence, the "healing" connotations of the tool.
- Select Healing Brush from the Tools palette. (short cut key: J or Shift+J)
- Press and hold ALT to turn your brush into the sampling cursor and click to sample your source area.
- Release ALT and carefully apply the brush onto the logo.
- When you release your mouse button, you'll see the area you just brushed over has been automatically blended with the surrounded area.
- Similarly with Patch Tool, if you brush too close to the discrete margin, you'll see the same blend effect described in the patch tool above.
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| Tony: There we go, 3 simple ways to touch up logos and trademarks. Now, depending on your how you use the tools, you can do quite a bit of touching up like removing blemishes on the face of your model or getting right of dust and tell tale stains on any object. Get comfortable to using these tools, you'll find them handy in a lot of situations! Till we meet again in the next tutorial. Have fun with Photoshop! |
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