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Part of the romance of travel is the notion that you're visiting remote, isolated wonders. The trouble is, when you arrive somewhere like Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat or the Pyramids at Gaza, you find you're not alone -- the places are crawling with hordes of poorly dressed tourists that muck up your dreams of pristine photographs.
We can't help you get rid of tourists at the actual sites, but we'll show you how to zap them out of your photos, offering friends and family the illusion that you had the place to yourself.
On site.
When you're headed to someplace you know will be packed with tourists consider going in the off parts of day. Sometimes that means early morning or late evening, both which also offer better light for your photos. Other times, like in our experience of Angkor Wat, the middle of day is so painfully hot most tourists retreat to their air-conditioned hotel rooms, making it an ideal time to visit the temples.
Even if there's just no avoiding the crowds there's still hope, you just need to plan ahead and take multiple exposures of the same scene.
Find a shot you like and don't worry if there's a few tourists in it, we'll get rid of them later. Now, without moving your camera too much (preferably not at all), wait until the people have moved and take another shot. Take as many as you think you'll need to ensure that you've recorded everything in the scene without anyone blocking the scenery.
In software
Once you get home dump your shots onto you computer and open up your favorite editing software. There are several applications that will work for this, ranging from the expensive, like Photoshop, to the free, like [http://www.gimp.org/ the GIMP]. The only real requirement is that the program offers a way to add layers to an image.
Open your collection of photos and copy and paste the contents of each as a separate layer in a new image. If you're shooting RAW images make sure that your settings (white balance, exposure, etc) are the same for all the photos.
Let's say you have three images stacked on three layers. Start by making the top layer invisible. Now select the second layer and create a mask for that layer (in Photoshop choose Layer >> Layer Mask >> Hide All. Your mask should now be black and the entire layer will be hidden.
Select the mask portion of the layer and switch to the brush tool, picking a brush with a feathered edge. Set your foreground color to white and start painting into the mask in the places where the tourists are standing.
Viola! Tourists disappear.
Once you have removed as many people as you can by painting on that layer, make the top layer visible again and repeat the masking processes. Paint out the rest of the tourists. If you have more than three photos, just keep repeating the process -- mask and the erase -- until you've gotten rid of all the tourists.
If there are slight exposure differences between layers try adding a levels or curves layer to correct them. If the images are slightly offset you can nedge them into alignment with the Transform tool.
What's left should be the scene as the travel brochure advertised -- isolated, remote and beautiful, making your friends and family green with envy.
Automated approaches
If you aren't the DIY type or don't have the time, there are a couple of services that will basically do this for you. Snapmania offers a [http://www.snapmania.com/info/en/trm/index.html Tourist Remover] which will composite your photos and take care of the masking steps for you. Another approach is to use Microsoft's [http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/ Group Shot] software which allows you to paint over the portions of an image you'd like to use and overlay those on a second image. Group Shot isn't necessarily geared specifically to the task of zapping tourists, but it will work in some instances.
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