You’ve just taken a gorgeous snap and think that is worthy a framing and hanging on the wall but…… the ugly date stamp has ruined it!   We can show you how to remove it and save your beautiful photo.

First open your image in Photoshop

The tool that you will use to remove the date stamp is the Patch Tool. You’ll find this tool under the Healing Tool in your toolbox, to access it just click and hold the healing tool until a pop out menu appears showing the patch tool, release click once you have the patch tool highlighted.

You need to trace around the date stamp in order to select this area to be corrected.

Make sure you have selected 'source' below your drop down menus

Once you’ve done this you can drag the selection to anywhere on your image to resample a new area for the patch tool to “patch” over the date stamp.  But first you will need to feather the selection so that you are left with no hard contrasting outlines, this will help with blending.

From 'select' drop down menu choose 'feather'

To feather the selection, click on “select” in the top tool bar and click “Feather” for the submenu.  The “feather” dialog box will appear, enter a value of around “25”, this will determine how much the edges on the new patch area will blur or feather.

Change feather radius to 25

Now it is a matter of dragging your selection to the desired area for resampling.  Make sure you use and area that is of similar pattern and colouring to the area under the date stamp.  To do this just drag the selection by left click and hold and then simply release over the area that you want to sample.

Hold your left mouse button down and drag your selection to sample an area

Now check out the great job that the patch tool has done! No more date stamp!

Date gone and picture improved and ready for printing

Lisa works in the Eastmon Lismore store and often encounters customers looking for simple Photoshop techniques to improve or fix their photos. This is the first of Lisa’s tips for Photoshop.

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