When using the Heal Selection or the Smart remove selection (both filters are Resynthesize filters, same thing except they have different names), use Unsharp Mask to improve your results.

Original image is here.

My image was scaled after I finished to 50% size.

First, select what you want to remove from the image by using the Lasso tool. Save that selection to Path so you don't lose it in the process - it's easy to do. Select > To Path.

My selection stroked with white:


With the selection going, go to
Filters > Enhance > Smart remove selection
OR (depending on your version)
Filters > Enhance > Heal Selection

If you have a large image and there's plenty of room around the selection, try the default radius of 50. This is experimental. I used 50 in this image. Click OK.

Wait for Resynthesizer to finish processing your image. I felt the results were a bit blurry.

My results with selection stroked with white:


With the selection still running, Filters > Enhance > Unsharp Mask. Be very gentle with the controls in the Unsharp Mask dialog. I made the amount very small. That's another place to experiment when doing your image.

My results with selection stroked with white:


My final results without the selection stroked:

Very cool O, works great. I have never tried this filter with unsharp mask before but that sure does the trick. (nice discovery)

Thank you, Molly.

Impressive. If I'd not seen the steps I'd have thought the final result was the original.

Wow, that is very cool! Thanks, Oregonian

Thanks Mike and Odin.

nice idea, it worked very well

Good idea O; I too never though about sharpening afterwards; usually just do some adaptive cloning.

O: that's helpful, thanks for sharing it .

Thanks PhotoComix, Lyle and AnMal.

Thanks very much, Oregonian - I hadn't realised you could do that to a selection. I usually just try to paint over things with the healing tool!

Thank you, Hatter.

I would not have known to do that except I felt my original results were a bit blurry and thought perhaps the Unsharp Mask filter might help. It was a nice discovery.

Lovely result O. Thank you.

Erisian.

i wonder how will work the other way around

as,
invert selection and apply a slight gaussian blur (depending on image size , let say 1, max 1,5 at wp size
and last select all and sharpen

to gimp unsharp filter i still prefer Unsharpmask2 or gmic unsharpmask to the gimp filter because it may darken the edges instead then whiten, but since the use should be moderate should make no much difference

I'm not quite sure what you mean, PhotoComix. I've attached the layers of the image with the selection still in place, and the path to the selection saved.

Perhaps you can try your idea on it.

Thanks O it was a good idea to test it

I have 2 " heal selection" script, the first is the " Smart Remove script fu" (but in the menu is just called Heal selection ) that works with the old version of resynthesizer and only does a mess both in the selection to heal and in the Edit menu
...Never saw such a mess in the edit menu after running a filter



as far from the result looks really crap



i include the script to check if maybe there is a better version or went somehow corrupted, i was not expecting such bad result

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instead with the phython script and last version of R. i could exactly duplicate your result

about my idea ... well i may have used far too much blur anyway this is the final result



So doesn't seems worth the complication ( 2 more step then your and less sharp) anyway i include the xcf
(i forgot to save the selection but i just used yours)

What may worth is check if your suggestion would work even with the Smart Remove script fu because i got very delusive results with that

Or maybe is my copy of the script to be corrupted ? i include my copy of the script the zip with the xcf

PS sorry for the confusion , i replaced the screenshot now

I got Resynthesizer from the Fedora Linux repository and the Smart remove selection is part of the resynthesizer plugin. I don't feel comfortable installing your version of smart remove into that. Could mess up my Resynthesizer plugin.

Your version of it looks OK to me.

I do enjoy experimenting though and your idea does have merit.

O i duplicated your result , in my second example, so you already have same plugin and (python) script then me.

What puzzled me is to see how bad was the result of the script fu that even if has a different file name(Smart Remove) has the same in the gimp menu.

Anyway check is quick this is the Heal Selection python script that seems working well



instead below the script fu that on the same image give quite poor result, and did weird things to the Gimp edit menu



You used the first, correct ?