eli5 : How do people photoshop things out of pictures without knowing what the background is?

Question

Do people have to take TWO pictures at the same angle in order to photoshop things out? How do they know what the background looks like?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Usually you can get away with clone tool which basically copy and pastes nearby pixels. So if there is a bird in front of leaves in the distance, you would have it copy from the section with leaves and paste where the bird is. Then you can use a gradated eraser to make the edges blend into the background.

There’s lots of other methods.