# Getting rid of contrails



## John Little (Mar 3, 2018)

Operating System:Win 10
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info):Classic 7.2 / Photoshop CC

I have a photo with a broad airplane contrail across a critical part of the image. It's broad because it was old and had spread out. It is in a part of the sky in which the color gradient changes rapidly as you move up, and there are no convenient parts of the sky that are the same color as would be in the area of the contrail. It would seem feasible to tell Photoshop to match the expected colors using a gradient based on the flanking colors, but I don't know how to do this. Content-aware Fill does a fairly good job but it's still pretty obvious that it's faked. Any suggestions? I can attach the image if that would help.


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 3, 2018)

Hi John, yeah, attach the image so we can have a look.


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## John Little (Mar 3, 2018)

Here's the photo--the contrail is left of the peak (which is Cathedral Peak in Yosemite)
One thing I've tried is to duplicate the image, then reduce the exposure of the duplicate in Photoshop and scoot the duplicate up, and select out the contrail so the darkened duplicate shows through. That ought to work, but it seems like a simple mathematical operation to interpolate what the colors ought to be.


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 3, 2018)

I haven't tried it, but I would think that the content-award patch tool should be able to do this.


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## Paul McFarlane (Mar 3, 2018)

John

I would clone the ends (so it's clean from the clouds) then either content aware fill or even the patch tool will do it. Then a quick clone clean-up

Paul


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## John Little (Mar 3, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> I haven't tried it, but I would think that the content-award patch tool should be able to do this.


Thanks, I can now make it work pretty well. With more skill and practice using content-aware fill I'm sure I can do an adequate job.


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## John Little (Mar 3, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> I haven't tried it, but I would think that the content-award patch tool should be able to do this.


Whoa, I didn't even know about the content-aware patch tool. It does a much better job than content-aware fill. Thanks!


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