Object Remover

Other DocBrio tools that are often used together with Object Remover.

About Object Remover

A good photo is often spoiled by one small thing: a date stamp in the corner, a spot of dust on the lens, a wire across the sky, a piece of litter on the grass. This tool lets you paint over that thing and fills the gap with colours taken from around it.

It is important to know how the filling works, because it decides what the tool is good at. No artificial intelligence is involved, and the tool has no idea what was behind the object. It starts at the edge of the area you painted and works inwards, giving every pixel a blend of the nearest pixels that are already known. Then it smooths the result and adds a little grain, matched to the grain of the photo around it, so the patch does not look like plastic.

This means the tool continues colours, but it does not invent detail. Where the surroundings are plain or softly blurred, such as sky, a painted wall, sand, water, a road or an out of focus background, the filled area blends in and is hard to find afterwards. Where the surroundings have a clear pattern, such as bricks, a fence, printed fabric, text or a face, the filled area comes out as a smooth smear, and the missing pattern makes it easy to notice.

Size matters in the same way. A small object leaves a small gap, and a small gap is filled from pixels that are close by and very similar. A large object leaves a gap whose middle is far from any real pixel, so the result looks more and more like a soft blur. As a rule of thumb, things that cover a small part of the picture work, and things that cover a large part do not.

You do not have to be exact when you paint. Cover the whole object and a thin rim around it, including its shadow if it has one. The tool also widens your marks by a few pixels on its own, so the soft outline of the object is included. If a trace is still visible after the first try, paint over the trace and press Remove again. Undo takes back the last ten steps, one at a time.

Everything happens on your device. When you download, a picture that came in as a JPG is saved as a JPG at high quality, and any other picture is saved as a PNG.

When Should I Use This?

Use it for small flaws on a calm background: a date stamp, dust spots and scratches on a scan, a skin blemish, a power line against the sky, a small object on a floor or a beach. For large objects, or for anything in front of a detailed background, a photo editor with a clone tool or an AI based service will give a better result.

How to Use Object Remover Step by Step

1. Choose one image.
2. Set the brush size so that it is a little wider than the object.
3. Paint over the object and its shadow. Press Clear marks if you want to start the marking again.
4. Press Remove and look at the result. Repeat for anything that is still visible, or press Undo.
5. Press Download to save the picture.

Limitations

The fill is smooth, so it cannot rebuild patterns, edges, text or faces behind the object. Large marked areas look blurred. Pictures larger than 3000 pixels on their longest side are made smaller. Undo remembers ten steps. Please use it only on pictures that are yours or that you are allowed to edit. Removing a watermark or a credit from someone else’s picture can break copyright law.

Related Tools and Guide

• Background Remover removes the whole background instead of one object.
• Image Compressor makes the edited photo smaller for an upload form.
• JPG to PNG gives you a PNG copy first, so repeated edits and saves do not wear the picture down.
• Guide: How to get an image under an upload limit.

Frequently Asked Questions