A cluttered background, tight framing, and flat lighting can undermine an otherwise strong portrait. This workflow covers the full process of cleaning up a photo using Photoshop's AI-powered Remove Tool, extending the canvas with Generative Expand, replacing the sky, and finishing with Camera Raw adjustments for grain, vignetting, and background blur.
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Practical Tips
These techniques work together as a sequential editing workflow, each step building on the last to produce a clean, polished result.
- Use the Remove Tool's "Find Distractions" feature to automatically categorize and color-code visual clutter, then paint over anything it missed — or hold Alt/Option to exclude areas you want to keep.
- Run wires and cables removal separately from general distractions, as Photoshop treats them as a distinct category with its own detection pass.
- When expanding the canvas with the Crop Tool, use the rule of thirds grid to position your subject at a horizontal-vertical intersection before generating new pixels.
- After any AI-based removal or expansion, add a small amount of film grain in Camera Raw to unify the image texture and make generated areas less detectable.
- In Camera Raw, use a radial gradient mask over your subject to raise exposure selectively, then lower saturation slightly to keep skin tones looking natural under the increased light.
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