Removing the Idiot

11 November 2010
As much as I like to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, some people's behavior baffles me.
We recently visited the Miami Aquarium and with a nod to Pinocchio and Ahab took a family picture in the mouth of a whale.
We never met him or even noticed him that day, but when we got home and saw our pictures, we saw him: the Idiot.
I'm not sure why this grown man wanted to be in our family picture. Did he think we were famous? Did he think that the woman who kindly used our camera to take the picture was part of a television camera crew? Was this part of his "five minutes of fame"? Maybe now it is, but I decided that I didn't want him in our family photo album.
In the picture on the right, I used the Graphics-Toolbox Cloning and Watercolor tools to remove him from the picture.
It took about 10 minutes to clone the background over the man and touch up the edges with the watercolor function, but now he is out of our life forever.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could remove all of the idiots in our lives this easily!