Removing plane trails / streaks in Photoshop

Hello,

I removed some plane trails yesterday and figured it might be of interest for others using Photoshop.

I live fairly close to a small airport, so I frequently got planes passing by and leaving trails in my shots. Since I'm mostly exploring the skies, I'm not stacking many light shots and I don't really want to throw my shots if the planes are just going through the edges of the frame.

So, here's what I tried and thought it was easy to do / worked pretty well, so I wanted to share:

1. Create a new layer above the picture;
2. Use the Line tool, change the mode to be Pixels (instead off Shape or Path);
3. Draw the thinnest line possible that would still cover the whole plane streak (color doesn't matter);
4. Right click the layer data, click Select pixels;
5. Hide the layer with the line and select the layer with the regular picture;
6. Edit > Content aware fill
7. Deselect anything too far off the line > Apply > Ok

And that's it! It might generate VERY small artifacts (I had to zoom at 200% to notice) along the path that look like tiny stars, BUT they can be easily removed with the Spot healing tool.

If you use another method, I'd be interested to know about it to compare the results, so feel free to post something back

Cheers!


Pictures below at 100% zoom:


Pictures below at 200% zoom: