post processing - What is the most effective Photoshop technique to remove people from photos?

For years I have played with the various Adobe Photoshop tools to remove pesky tourists from my landscape photos. Some of the tools and methods I've tried include:

• Clone Stamp Tool(.87 or earlier)


• Duplicate layer techniques(3.0)


• Healing Brush(7.0)


• Patch Tool(7.0)


• Spot Healing Brush(CS2)


• Content Aware Fill(CS5)


• Content Aware Patch(CS6)¹

I still haven't found myself sticking with one tool or set of tools in most situations. I flip back and forth and can't decide what is best. I also don't really know what others are using since just searching for a tutorial will yield results, but everyone seems to use them all as well.

My question is, assuming the shot is already complete(not as in this prior question), what post production techniques can I use to best remove human beings from the following photo? I've also included my scaled down result, using the patch tool, duplicate layers with opacity adjustments, clone stamp tool, spot healing brush, and probably other things³. It isn't perfect at 100% but probably can pass as so to the untrained eye².

_{¹I've never actually used this one | ²Facebook | ³It took me about 1.5 hours of messing around in PS CS5}