Cover Up Stuff I Don’t Want Seen?

Of course, it depends on what you want to hide, but there are a couple of ways. One is to the use the Clone Stamp tool (S) to clone a copy of something nearby right over the thing you want covered up. You Option-click (PC: Alt-click) in a clean, nearby area to sample that area, then start painting over what you want to remove, and it paints the sampled area over it. Another way is to select a piece of the image and use it to cover that area. For example, if you wanted to cover a sconce on a wall, you can put a lasso or rectangular selection around a nearby piece of wall a little larger than the sconce (as seen above; I always say “nearby,” so you choose a place that has similar lighting and texture). Then, go under the Select menu, under Modify, and choose Feather. Enter 10 pixels to soften the edges of your selected area (so it blends in better), and then press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to put a copy of that selected area up on its own layer above your current layer. Now, get the Move tool (V) and align that copy over the sconce on the wall, so you’re covering it with more wall (as seen in the inset above). The feathering should help it blend, but if you still see an obvious edge on this copy then try this: click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, get the Brush tool (B) and choose a soft-edged brush from the Brush Picker up in the Options Bar, then paint in black over the edge until it’s gone and it blends in with the rest of your image.