Photoshop Recompose Tool

 

Recomposing a Scene

When you’re taking photos, especially photos of groups, it’s not always possible to line people up the way you’d like them to appear. The Recompose tool can help by shifting objects that you choose while retaining a workable background. Like the Photomerge Scene Cleaner, the tool lets you paint areas of an image to choose which objects to retain and which to merge or remove.

Unlike the Photomerge tools, however, the Recompose tool doesn’t sport its own interface. It’s a cousin to the Crop tool, and performs its magic when you adjust an image’s borders.

To recompose a scene:

  1. Choose the Recompose tool from the toolbox, or press C. The image gains control handles as if you were using the Crop tool.

    2. Figure 68 The Recompose tool.
  2. Drag a handle to resize the image (Figure 69). The tool calculates which areas can be removed or compressed.

    3. If you like the end result, click the Commit button to finish. If the effect needs more attention, click the Cancel button (or press Esc) and continue to the next step.

    Figure 69 We want to bring the man and baby closer together. Drag a handle to recompose the scene. In this case, however, the man’s face is compressed.

  3. To gain greater control over which areas are preserved, use the marking tools in the options bar. With the Mark for Protection brush, paint areas that should remain intact (Figure 70). Use the Mark for Removal brush to specify areas that should definitely be removed.

    4. Figure 70 The Mark for Protection Brush preserves its painted pixels.

  4. Drag a handle again to resize the image (Figure 71). You may need to fine tune the marked areas to get a smoother result.

    5. Figure 71 Areas marked for protection are left unharmed, while the background gets compressed.

  5. Click the Commit button to apply the edit.

TIP

You’ll probably want to switch to the Crop tool after committing the edit to remove the area that’s no longer used in the image.

Is something unwanted in the middle of your scene? Use the Mark for Removal tool to completely paint it out; Elements removes those pixels first.

Choose a size from the Preset menu in the options bar to restrain how the image is resized (for example, to keep the original aspect ratio).

Figuring that this feature would get the most use in bringing people together (or moving them apart), Adobe added a button on the options bar: Highlight Skin Tones. Click it to apply the Mark for Protection brush to areas matching skin tones (Figure 72).

Figure 72 Highlight Skin Tones marks people (or people-colored things) for protection.