Removals Nobody Notices

What it is for

An order of operations for removing an object from a photo, built around the four things that give a removal away: the leftover shadow, the bent straight line, the repeated cloned texture, and the blur that only shows at normal viewing size. Use it whenever a removal is going somewhere public. It also marks the point where removal stops being retouching and starts inventing detail that was never there.

The skill Copy

Use when something has to come out of a photo and nobody should notice.

Ask first whether it can be cropped out instead. A crop never leaves a
smear. Removal is for things in the middle of the picture.

Work in this order:
1. Select the object plus a small margin of the surface around it. A
   selection drawn tight to the object leaves a rim of it behind.
2. Remove it, then look for what people forget: its shadow, its
   reflection, and the part of it visible somewhere else in the frame.
   An object removed while its shadow stays is worse than not removing
   it at all.
3. Check the surface that healed over. Straight lines are where it
   fails - tiles, floorboards, skirting, window frames, the horizon. A
   line that bends around where the object used to be is the tell.
4. Check repeated texture. Grass or gravel filled in from nearby will
   repeat a recognisable clump. Break it up by hand.
5. Look at the whole picture fitted to the screen. A patch that is
   invisible at full zoom often shows as a soft blur at normal size.

If the healed area touches a person, a face or a product edge, do it in
two passes: clear the easy background part first, then finish the
border by hand at high zoom.

Stop and reconsider if the object covers something the picture needs to
show. The tool invents what was behind it. Inventing a person's arm, a
brand's label, or detail in a photo of a real event is not retouching.

Keep the before and after. You will be asked to prove what changed.

How to install it Copy

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

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Where it came from