Use the Photoshop Pen tool to remove fine lines

If you’ve ever been plagued by annoying wires ruining an otherwise cracking landscape, this amazingly simple but cunningly effective technique using the Photoshop pen tool is just the answer. With extra fine lines such as the wires in this image, the use of brush based solutions like the Clone and Healing tools can create clumsy results (for a good example of when you would use the Clone tool, see our tutorial on how to make an invisible man picture).

This is especially true at points where lines intersect areas of complicated detail. Our quick and easy solution is to create a simple path using the Pen tool, and then stroke it with the Spot Healing tool.

The beauty of this technique is that it’s easy to precisely target a very small and narrow area. And it has a great ease-to-effectiveness ratio. Let’s see how it’s done…

How to remove fine lines with the Photoshop Pen tool

01 Make a Path
Open up your original image. Select the Pen tool from the Tools Panel and make anchor points at the end of each wire.

Use the control handles to fit the curve of the wire so it matches exactly.

02 Set the Healing Brush
Once you’ve created a Path with the Pen tool over the whole length of the wire, choose the Spot Healing Brush tool from the Tools Panel set to about 12 pixels. Make sure that Content-Aware is active.

03 Stroke the Path
Now return to the Pen tool and right click on the Path to bring up the Context menu. Select Spot Healing Brush tool from the drop down, make sure Simulate Pressure is not checked and hit OK. The wires are history!

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2012 at 11:38 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.