Photoshop Guru's...HELP! A PS Nightmare!

Hello all!

I'm in dire need of some guidance. I was asked a big big big big favor from a coworker. There's a special occasion coming up and she wants to gift this image to a relative. The only request is to remove the fellow on the left along with the child on his lap in the image. I've tried pretty much everything within my abilities to do this. Shortening the couch, cloning whatever tiny amount of couch material and building in as much as I could. All to no avail. It always comes out looking obviously doctored.

Is this avoidable? Does someone know a good way to go about this?

The image enclosed is at fill resolution.

Thanks in advance!

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Why do you have to include the whole couch in the picture? Why not just crop most of them out and use a little cloning to fix what's left of them?

I could do that, but any attempt has, embarrassingly, been borderline terrible.

Interesting - here's a very quick take on it......turned the couch into a love seat. And there is no border line involved - it's terrible.

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Here's a 5 min workup - IMO the key is to flip the image and save this flip as a duplicate of the image. Use this flip duplicate as a base to clone from (eg. couch).

Titus...that's the way to go!

Palladium....THATS TOTALLY IT! It's exactly what I was looking to do. Could I maybe donate a few bucks for an unwatermarked version?

You would seriously be making my life so much easier! It's not a money job or anything, just a favor for a pal.

It will be difficult. The easiest option is to retake the picture without the guy and the child. Your co-worker have skewed idea of image manipulative technology

Manipulative technology is endless! Haha.

Nice work, Dave and Palladium!

Very nice work! I can't thank you guys enough, you made someones day very special.