VANISHING POINT FILTER

The Vanishing Point filter in the Filter menu can be used to retouch photographs while matching the perspective. In the example shown here I used the Vanishing Point filter to remove a section of the wall on the left, replacing it with paving stones sampled from elsewhere in the image.

1 Duplicate layer

Open the image in Photoshop and create a duplicate copy of the Background layer by dragging the Background layer down to the New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel. Next, choose Vanishing Point from the Filter menu.

2 Define perspective

Use the Create Plane tool (C) to define the perspective. Do this by making four successive clicks to define the plane of perspective, which you can do by looking for clues in the image, such as by following the lines of the paving stones.

3 Fine-tune it

In most cases it will be necessary to fine-tune the perspective planes. In this instance select the Edit Plane tool (V) and click on the corner handles to edit the plane shape. Then all you need to do is drag on the side handles to expand the plane.

4 Remove wall

Next, select the Stamp tool (S) and, with the Heal mode enabled, used the Stamp tool to remove the wall on the left. Alt- click to set the source point then move the cursor across and click and drag to start cloning while matching the perspective.

5 Retouch

To get the Vanishing Point retouching to look convincing, build up the retouching gradually, taking care to keep switching the source points. It helps that the Vanishing Point filter Stamp tool always shows a clone overlay to let you preview cloning before you click to apply.