Last Updated on November 12, 2020 by Christopher G Mendla
InPixio Photo Eraser solved a common problem for me. I have a couple of location blogs. I often need to take photos where unwanted people or objects are in the photos (Like my inlaws.. ooops, just kidding). I was editing unwanted objects out with GIMP (An open source Photoshop work alike). I saw some ads for the InPixio product and decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be a great investment.
UPDATE Nov 2020 – I’ve been using the InPixio Photo Eraser for about 2 years and am very happy with it. It provides a quicker, faster alternative for erasing objects than GIMP or Photoshop.
I do reviews of attractions and restaurants on two of my sites. Sometimes, you just can’t get a photo without people or vehicles. There are all kinds of rules and laws about publishing an identifiable photo of someone without their consent that you don’t want to violate. Yes, there are exceptions but I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one on Youtube.
The process can be done with Photoshop or an alternative such as GIMP. The process is slow. You usually need to clone other parts of the pic to replace the people or objects. In the case of a clear blue sky and telephone wires, this is relatively easy. However, it still takes time.
Now, assume you want to get a nice picture of the outdoor eating area. Someone is sitting there memorizing their coffee or drink. It would be a bit rude to yell “Hey bozo, how about getting up so I can take a picture?”
I purchased InPixio PhotoClip for less than $50.
Installation issues
I was a little disappointed at first as I was having difficulty getting it to run on my Windows 10 system. That can be a real turn off. I found that if I did a right-click “Run as administrator” during the installation and every time I ran it, everything was fine. That really isn’t a problem as I have other applications where I have to do the same thing.
Basic usage of PhotoClip 9
PhotoClip 9 comes with three tools:
- Photo Editor – This allows some basic manipulation of colors including color temperatures, sharpness, noise reduction vignetting, grain effects, posterization and text. Adding text with the photo editor is a lot simpler than using Photoshop or Gimp.
- Photo Eraser – (the topic for this post). This tool allow you to crop, erase and clone to remove unwanted images
- Photo Cutter – This allows you to extract portions of an image and place them into other images.
Advantages
The real advantage of Photo eraser over higher end editors is simplicity and speed. For the type of sites I’m working with, I don’t need perfection. I just need to get rid of the unwanted parts of the image. The process is far from perfect but “Perfection is the enemy of good enough”. I’m not trying to win photography awards. A picture of the outside of a building will probably get less than a half second of viewing.
As an example, here is a shot of the front of local restaurant. I usually like to get at least one outside pic. However, it is a popular place and it was Labor Day Weekend so there was no chance of a clear shot.
I’ve blanked out the faces
Example of Photo Eraser.
It took less than a minute to remove the people using the photo eraser. The same task with GIMP or Photoshop’s clone tool would probably have taken closer to five minutes.
The editing is obvious if you know that they are there. However, it is more than adequate for the intended purpose., The average person is going to probably focus on “ClamBar” for a few nanoseconds and then move on.
Yes, I know the composition sucks. Give me a break. I was hungry and wanted to get in, get my take out and eat.
Summary for Inpixio Photo Eraser
The Photo Eraser alone was worth the price. I believe it is an annual subscription but even so, it is worthwhile especially in terms of increased productivity when working on sites.
As with any image editing tool it require some basic knowledge of image editing, practice and patience. However, the learning curve is not nearly as steep as that of Photoshop.