In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques video, Deke takes a problematic but once-in-a-lifetime family vacation photo and "uncrops" in Photoshop: straightening the horizon, filling in the background, and even restoring missing detail. Here’s the starting point, a wonderful moment atop the pyramid at Coba, a Mayan ruined city in the Yucután peninsula:

If you’ve ever straightened a photograph in Photoshop, you know that the rules of geometry require that you’ll crop away some part of your image. So after straightening the horizon, Deke sets out to restore those areas. In the process, he also makes some room at the bottom of the image to allow for the restoration of his younger child’s toes. Along the way, you can see how he uses Content-Aware fill to fill in the gaps, then fine tunes with the Healing Brush to cover his tracks. 

For members of lynda.com, Deke’s got an exclusive movie this week in which he actually restores the cropped off bit of Sam’s right foot. (The trick is to steal it from another photograph.) Here’s the finished project, suitable for commemorating this epic adventure:

If you’re not a member of lynda.com, you can get a free week’s trial to check out the members-only movie as well of the rest of Deke’s Techniques by going to lynda.com/deke and signing up.