We photographers take extra care as we compose scenes in camera. Yet there are times when distracting elements cannot be eliminated from the scene at the time of capture. Distractions could be a fixed object that we cannot eliminate from the composition, or things that enter and exit our frame that we cannot control. Thankfully, our digital darkroom offers us plenty of tools - cloning, healing, content aware fill - to remove latent distractions in our images. However, removing these distractions can leave us with a different problem - repeated patterns or other artifacts. Good news! You can use your same retouching tools, in a slightly different way, to take care of those issues, too.

Repeating Patterns After Retouching

After capturing a long exposure at the beach, my scene had a few ghostly figures on the beach at the base of the stairs. During my multi-minute exposure, beachgoers wandered down to the ocean’s edge. I retouched them away with a combination of tools, which left me with a new problem. The sand at the base of the stairs had an unnatural, repeated pattern. It may not be the worst retouching I’ve ever done, yet the staggered sand patterns are clear and suggest a hasty retouching job.

Repeated patterns in the beach at the base of the stairs are left over after retouching away some beachgoers.

Retouching With A Lower Opacity

So how do we deal with and eliminate these repeated patterns? The first technique to explore is to use our tried and true retouching tools, clone stamp and heal, to break up the repetitive pixels. The key setting is an opacity, or brush strength, of less than 100. A semi-transparent cloning or healing is a hybrid of replacing and blending pixels. Like many retouching jobs, several brush strokes are often needed. Also, switching between clones and heals is helpful. Clone stamp and heal also have a brush feather option. Experiment with the feather size as well when breaking up the repeating patterns.

In my beach photo, I started with several longer brush strokes, making diagonal “cuts” across the repeating patterns to break them up. Sometimes, but not always, the sample point needed to be manually adjusted. In Lightroom, the source point can be repositioned by clicking and dragging. In other tools, usually for cloning, you can select the source for the pixel samples first, and the brush.

In my example, the repeating pattern is dominated by the darker tones in the sand. A few well-placed single-click retouches are used to remove interceding shadows to further eliminate the sand patterns.

Adjust Tonality

When repeating patterns are dominated by a tone or hue, that offers another opportunity and approach to retouching. Use a localized adjustment brush to adjust the tonality and downplay the repeating pattern. In my example, color is not a factor. However, shadows are a factor. Adding a localized brush to dodge (lighten) the area, as well as raise the black point and open shadows slightly, downplays the repetitive triangles of the footprints in the sand.

Notice also that texture and clarity are lowered. This softens the retouched area. For softer subjects like sand or clouds, a reduction in clarity or texture is helpful to smooth a retouched area, further reducing repetitive patterns. If you are working with geometric patterns, more rigid clone brush strokes are more helpful.

A localized brush to normalize tonality across the retouched area helps reduce retouch artifacts and repeated patterns.

Take Your Time

Finalizing a retouching job takes a little time and effort. For more complex retouches, several tools and multiple brush strokes are needed. Take your time and pay attention to the details. In my photo, extra care needed to be given to the vertical edge along the dark rock. The edge of the rock needs to remain crisp while also smoothing out the brighter sand. Clone retouches are most useful in these situations. A pixel by pixel copy helps maintain crisp edges.

After a few more minutes of tidying the sand, the final photo looks clean and smooth. The repeated patterns no longer jump out at the viewer and the sand looks smooth and believable.