How to remove unwanted people from images

calendar Sep 7, 2014 · 2 min read · Photography tips  ·
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"Oh, what a weather. Perfect for a day out with the camera." You say to yourself on a fine day with perfect light and weather for photography. You plan out everything very quickly. You select a tourist spot in your city. You arrive the spot, fully geared and start taking photographs. However, soon you realize that there are too many unwanted people in the frame. You need not to scratch your head or burn your pocket.

This article will provide you the easiest way to achieve people-free images. And that too without investing a huge amount on Photoshop.

You need

  1. A Camera
  2. A Tripod (Or some place where you can keep the camera fixed.)
  3. A laptop/pc for post processing.

Steps

  1. Decide the frame and fix the camera on tripod accordingly.
  2. Take multiple photos in the same frame. 15-20 should be enough.

Post-processing steps

  1. Put the photographs in sequence in a directory (Folder) in your laptop/pc.

  2. Install Imagemagick.

  3. Open terminal (Command prompt in Windows) in the directory where the image sequence has been kept.

  4. Run

convert *.fileformat -evaluate-sequence median filename.jpg

file format is the format of the image files in sequence (jpg/jpeg/JPG etc.). filename is the desired name of the new file. 5. A new file named filename.jpg will be created in the same directory.

You are done. :)

Please note that there are other ways to achieve this as well. Photoshop extended provides statistics tool. GIMP has a plugin that does the same thing.