Removing a date or time from a picture

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By John Sweeney - 16th of January 2007

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Modern digital cameras have a facility so that the date and or time shows on the finished picture. There are a number of ways to get rid of the date etc by using one of many tools, such as : the clone tool, healing brush or just simply blocking it out.

In Photoshop there is a patch tool and a healing brush which quickly remove flaws while preserving the background texture in the surrounding area.
Very often the patch tool will do the job on it's own, and, it is quite easy to use.

To select the patch tool hit the J key on your keyboard and scroll through using Shift J until you see the tool. It is actually located 4 down on the left hand line of tools on your toolbar.

Once you have selected the tool look at the contextual bar and you will see various items there, they all help you do your job by allowing you extra selections. Generally all you need to do is make the one selection so no need to select anything other than the first icon, 'new selection', then make sure the source button is selected.

Move your mouse cursor near the date and hold down the left button then mark around the date or time or whatever you want to remove. Next you can choose what to replace it with, choose an area of similarity above below or to left or right of the area you have selected. Then grab the area selected with the left mouse button and it will cover the first area selected with the new selected area. Then select Ctrl D to de-select the area. Sometimes the date may be covering an area that needs to be further repaired, so now you have to resort to the Clone tool or the healing tool in order to replace lost pieces of the puzzle. Give it a whirl, you never know.