Gimp How-To - removing objects

So Brady pointed out something in his awesome light trails pic that I hadn't even originally noticed.... there was a person standing on the hill. Since it bugs him, I figured it would be a good opportunity to show how to remove unwanted elements from photos.

Once again I will be using GIMP (because it is free and anyone can start using it right now), but this process is basically identical to how you would do it in Photoshop too.

So, first we open the picture and zoom in on the area we want to edit:

Select the clone tool. It looks like a little rubber stamper:

While holding down the "Ctrl" button on your keyboard, click once on an area you want to use as the base for your cover up job. In this case I picked a patch of sky near the person on the hill (as indicated by the little circular box with the crosshairs in it).

Now release the Ctrl button and start clicking on the area you want to cover up. It will grab data from the place you Ctrl-clicked, and copy it to wherever you are clicking...

It's covered up, but it doesn't really look too natural. So to clean up the area we covered we are going to use the Healing tool. It looks like a pair of band-aids:

Same deal again... hold down the Ctrl button on your keyboard and select and area of sky to use and then release the Ctrl button and click in the areas you want to smooth out. Just be careful near the mountain line because it will pull some of that rock in and make it look blurry. Just click on the sky area.

And that's it! No more guy on the mountain top.