Removing people
Here’s a handy trick to magically make disappear from your shots, as long as they keep on moving…
Sometimes, no matter how patient you are and how long you wait, you will always find there is someone walking around in your scene. If there are crowds then there is nothing that you can do, but if there are just a few people then you might be tempted to spend time in Photoshop retouching them out. This can be time-consuming though, and if they happen to be standing over a complicated background then it is well beyond my retouching skills!
Luckily there is a relatively straightforward technique that can often work. Put the camera on a tripod, and compose the picture, then take a series of shots every five or 10 seconds, depending on the number of people and how fast they are moving.
To magically make the people disappear, select them in Lightroom and use the Open as Layers in Photoshop command. In Photoshop, select all the layers, then select Layer>convert to Smart Object. Finally, select Layer>smart Objects>stack Mode> Median, and then watch everyone disappear!
A slight complication can be if clouds move between exposures, as Photoshop will attempt to make them disappear too! To remedy this, select one of the constituent frames with the best sky and copy the whole image. Return to the Smart Object image then use Select>sky to select the sky. Finally, use the Paste Into command to replace only the sky with the better version.
Note that using this process isn’t always possible: if there are too many people or if some are sitting in the same place and don’t move, or if there is strong wind that causes objects such as trees, grass or even prayer flags to move between exposures.