Here's a look at what our final banner graphic will look like:
Rotate, crop and clone
1. Begin by opening the file "hootow.jpg" from your computer.
(hootow.jpg) As you can see, this is
a pretty big image. The part we want is the tower, a little bit of the
trees, and that's it. You'll also notice that the tower is leaning a
little bit to the right. That bugs me, so lets fix that next:
2. Pull down the Image menu to "Rotate Canvas >" and
select "Arbitrary" from the sub-menu. You'll notice that you could also
rotate the entire document 90° either direction, 180°, as well
as flip the document horizontal or vertical. In the "Rotate Canvas" dialog
box, type in "1" degree, and select the check button for "CCW" or counter-clockwise,
then click "OK." The entire document rotates 1°.
3. Now, let's crop the document. Get the Crop tool from the Toolbar. Let's
crop fairly closely to the top and left sides of the tower, but include
some of the trees below and to the right (see image, left). Drag the
crop marks around the area and adjust it as needed. Hit Return/Enter
key to set the crop.
4. I think the lamp post and gap in the trees distract from the
overall effect, so let's retouch them out, using the Rubber Stamp tool,
a.k.a. the "Clone" tool.
Select the Rubber Stamp tool from the Toolbar.
We will also need to select a brush from the Brush Palette, so let's
click on a moderate-size brush, the one at the end of the second row
of brushes will do.
The clone tool works by duplicating a brush-sized chunk of image
and pasting it on top of the existing image. Set the area to be cloned
by holding the Alt(PC)/Option(Mac) key down and clicking slightly above
and to the left of the light post globe.
Then move the tool over the globe, click and hold, dragging the tool
over the light post and down, until the entire light post has been
covered up. Repeat with the gap in the trees.
Something to keep in mind with Clone: Look for the bias of dark and
light areas. The idea is to fake the eye into believing it's natural.
Follow the bias when cloning.
This is a good place to save your work, so far. Pull down the File
menu to "Save As..." Call the file "hootow_crop.psd" or something similar.
Let's
crop fairly closely to the top and left sides of the tower, but include
some of the trees below and to the right (see image, left). Drag the
crop marks around the area and adjust it as needed. Hit Return/Enter
key to set the crop. 
