How to remove Power Lines with TouchRetouch

While leading lines are a good thing in photography, other kinds of lines, like power lines, maybe a bit disturbing in a photo. But thanks to TouchRetouch App, removing power lines from a photo is easy, and you don‘t even need Photoshop or Lightroom for that.

Don‘t get me wrong, I like and use Adobe Lightroom Mobile and Photoshop (on iPad). But for retouching and removing objects from photos, nothing beats TouchRetouch on iPhone or iPad.

TouchRetouch App is one of my recommended iPhone photo editing apps, and I‘ve been using it since it was released. So, TouchRetouch, for me, is the right tool for this job.

How to remove power lines from photos with Touch Retouch

First, you can launch TouchRetouch in two different ways. Either start the app directly by tapping on its icon on iPhone or launch it as a photo extension directly from Photos App. The latter is my preferred way to begin it.

If you launch the app as a photo extension, the edited photo will be saved as a version over the original photo in Photos App. This way, by tapping edit on the photo in Photos App, you can always revert to the original by tapping the revert to original in the upper right corner, and your Photos App will be less cluttered.

So, let‘s have a look at how to remove power lines in a photo on the iPhone.

First, open the photo in TouchRetouch. As I‘ve mentioned, I prefer to launch it as a photo extension. So, tap on the photo you want to edit, then tap edit in the upper right corner.

Launch TouchRetouch as a photo extension, step 1

The photo I‘m using as an example here is the Vienna State Opera. Right above the building, you can see some kinds of wires.

These aren‘t power lines, but they‘re used to hold the overhead wire of the streetcar. I find them disturbing in this photo and so I will remove them and demonstrate the process, step by step.

Once you‘ve tapped edit in Photos App, tap the three icons in the upper right corner. You should see a panel with TouchRetouch in it. If it‘s not visible, tap edit actions and see if you need to enable it.

Launch TouchRetouch as a Photo Extension, Part 2

Next, chose the line removal tool in the lower toolbar.

Chose Line Removal Tool in Touch Retouch

Once you‘ve tapped it, you‘ll see three options:

Touchretoouch Line Removal Tool Options

The first option is the „complete line removal tool. “ It will remove any line from a photo. Completely. The next tool is the segment remove, which allows you to remove only a specific range of the line from your photo.

Under settings, you can choose how thick the line that you intend to remove will be. For power lines and similar lines, the thin settings works perfectly all right. For thicker lines, like ropes, choose medium or large.

The first thing I always do is to zoom into the lines I want to remove, and you can do that by pinch out over the photo. And now comes the real magic.

Just draw along the line you want to remove.

Draw near the line you want to remove

You don‘t have to draw exactly over the line. Just try to hit it once or twice. As soon as you‘re finished drawing, release your finger. TouchRetouch will detect the line, mark it in green and remove it.

Detected line will be marked with green color

Done.

Now let‘s remove the other two lines (the left one and the one that leads towards the building) in the same way.

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Remove line in front of building using TouchRetouch

Whenever you remove a line in front of anything else, like the building, in this case, zoom in and check if there‘s anything that needs to be fixed manually. Though TouchRetouch App does an excellent job removing lines, occasionally, the image needs a bit of additional retouching. If you look closely, you‘ll notice a little glitch where the line was.

Can you spot the glitch?

In such a case, I recommend using the clone stamp tool to fix these little glitches. Or, if the glitch is small enough, you may even consider leaving it this way. 99% of people probably won‘t even recognize it. The remaining 1% of pixel-peepers will probably find a dozen of other issues in your photo.

Finally, I removed the small iron ring that connected the three lines using the quick healing brush.

And that‘s all you need to do. In the case of this photo, I also fixed perspective correction, before I uploaded it to my Instagram. Here's the final photo:

Final photo of the Vienna State Opera with lines removed

Removing lines is just one of the great features of TouchRetouch App. Head over to my TouchRetouch App review to learn about all the other great features of this great app.