Testing ai Remove power lines in Photoshop, how good is it?

Colin Smith

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How good is the Photoshop Auto Remove Wires tool?

Hi everyone!

Last week we looked at the new auto remove people and auto remove power lines in Photoshop. Currently in Photoshop beta, see how to get the Photoshop BETA here. 

I had a few comments saying the wire removal was too easy, because it had a simple background.

This week, we try the remove tool on a number of challenging images, and I really try to break it. Let’s see how well it does, shall we? We go through each image in the video, let’s see what the challenge is on each image.

This is a a clear sky, simple background, but there are a lot of wires.

Steel electricity pylons and power lines over a green field under a clear blue sky

This appears simple. But, I wonder how it will manage the contrails in the sky. Will it think they are wires too?

Gravel country road with power lines and contrails in a sunset sky

More complex wires

Utility pole with transformers and tangled wires against a blue sky

The downed wires have a difficult background with the trees

Downed tree and power lines across a road with traffic barriers

This night shot has mixed low light and low contrast lighting, as well as haze and flares.

Foggy night street with glowing street lamps and overhead wires

Maybe the ai isn’t trained as well on an aerial view.

Aerial view of utility bucket trucks and workers at a power pole

Then, lastly, we will unleash the Kraken! Can it fix this impossible image?

Chaotic tangle of hundreds of electrical wires over an old street

Check out the video and see how well Photoshop can remove these power lines using the new ai wire Remove tool.

People asked about a second pass, so I tried that too and made a 1 min video here

Good to see you here.

Colin


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38 comments

  1. Bill Junk

    After your previous tutorial I tried the People and Wires and Cables remove feature on an image that had people walking along a trail with a safety cable next to the trail as the trail circled a waterfall. The safety cable was suspended by small metal posts about every 10 feet. The remove People feature did quite well although I think the resolution of the replacement was not quite as good as that in the surrounding areas. Next I tried the remove Wires and Cables feature. It removed about 75 % of the safety cable, generally the portion in the middle of the image and left the cable supports in place. It also left a portion of the safety cable on the left and right extremes of the image. I tried it again from scratch and the performance was much worse. I can’t say that I did anything different on the second try. All in all I do find the tool to be useful because it can accomplish the removal of distracting elements in a just a few steps that would take a lot of tedious steps to do with non-AI tools.

  2. Jim Taylor

    I tried if on a chain link fence shot but it only took out a few of the wires. Not good results.
    I liked the capability of electrical wires and people. I guess it will be in next version of Photoshop.
    Thanks for your tutorials!

    1. Colin Smith Author

      Not designed for chain link. I hope they add an option for that someday though

  3. Sharon Saltzman

    In the “impossible image” after you applied the removal tool, could you then merge the layers and try again with a less complex image?

  4. Luminar Neo has been doing it for ages, and does not require preliminary steps. Just select “remove power lines.”

  5. Doug-Schafer

    What happens if you do it again (a second time) on the already cleaned image. Like last one; stamp a new layer and try again…better?

  6. Surprising results. Fun episode.
    And we think you should continue with that exciting new voice and those cool threads.
    Sincerely
    Pat Sajak
    Steve Harvey
    Drew Carey

  7. There are so many fantastic lessons in the café.
    This one sends me revisiting a dew pictures of mine.
    So well explained.

  8. Jim A Walters

    After you did the first pass on the last image if you saved and did the process again it may remove more wires.

  9. Hi Colin, it works quite well but if you use levels after removing the wires, they appear again. Any changes to brightness needs to be done first.
    Like your videos a lot.

  10. Don Sutherland

    Thanks for the demo as always – but what are the poles doing there without any wires?
    I was a photojournalist during the film era (Kodachrome), You can now create so many
    “dishonest,” photos.

    1. Colin Smith Author

      It purposely does not remove the posts, you can remove them if you want. As you know, these features are not for use with photojournalism, in fact, most of Photoshop isn’t for that case.

  11. Don Wright

    My initial results were not as good as yours. I took a sunset picture that included several wires in it. The one that against the sky was removed perfectly, however the ones that were against the dark trees were horrible. The result I got back was a smear where the lines were, and some of the lines were not removed at all. I did a much better job doing it manually.

  12. Been interesting to see the “kraken” with a second pass to see if it would get the rest once a lot of the wires (distractions) were out.

  13. Well done, and thanks for the intro! Question about that last image, and what happens if you run the tool on the repaired version?

  14. Excellent and the fact one doesn’t have to remove each line by itself is amazing. Great Demo-Thank you

  15. Sorry Colin but I’m not impressed with the one with the two that had the downed lines and also the one with the lines along a road. It left a lot of glaring anomalies in place of the wires that you would have to fix manually. Might have just been faster to do those areas by hand in the first place.

  16. Awesome!!! I gave myself several complicated samples before I saw this video, and even though some of them I ran through an extra time or two to pick up a few remaining lines, it was unbelievable how superb it worked! THANKS FOR SHARING!!!

  17. Rick Verbanec

    Can the last one be improved by merging the first two layers and doing it again?

  18. Johann Klaassen

    Holy wire smokes!!!!!! I’ll have to try it on some of my images, the question I have is, where in the world was that last convoluted jumble of wires and what keeps them from shorting out?

  19. johnbgood

    it thinks I’m a robot. I signed in looking for the how to video on power line removal in photoshop. will you help?

    1. Colin Smith Author

      Who thinks you are a robot?
      You can find the tuts on the website, you don’t need to sign in.

  20. George Felton

    I can’t find remove distractions on top of the page as your video shows. Opening the remove tool does not bring this up. I have the latest version of Photoshop, what am I missing?

  21. Fantastic Feature – takes all the laborious manual deletions away leaving little or nothing to do after its done its thing

  22. Jim Fergusson

    Hi, thanks for all the great videos. Regarding chain link fences mentioned above, I have had success with the remove reflections feature in ACR. Works well where the fence is bright.

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