A Guide to Retouching Environments in Photoshop

If you're working as a real estate photographer, taking environmental portraits, or simply want cleaner shots, a little bit of retouching and cloning can go a long way. This helpful tutorial will show how to declutter and polish your shots. 

Whether it's because of your client's questionable decorating choices, clutter, or some other factors outside your control, you're probably going to want clean up most any shot of the interior of a building or something similar. Doing so is often a balancing act between many different retouching tools and techniques, and Aaron Nace from Phlearn shows most of those and when to use each in this great video. You'll learn how to quickly remove undesired objects with the Spot Healing Brush, how to clone, resize, and warp objects to match, and the unexpected capability of the Brush Tool in removing objects, along with some quick global adjustments to improve the overall look. It's a game of all the small adjustments adding up to a big difference, but once you see the before and after, you'll see why it's worth paying attention to those details. 

And if you'd like to dive into architectural photography more, be sure to check out our series with Mike Kelley, "Where Art Meets Architecture."

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Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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