[RoxnDox]

Hi all. I have a photo I really like from our Alaska trip, but it has a pretty big flaw and I'm not sure of the best way to deal with it.

Top photo is of Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, from inside their very nice visitor center. As you can see, despite my best efforts I ended up with a big fuzzy patch of light reflected off a window. K-30 w/ 13-135WR handheld



Next up is a crop of the problem area.


The problem is that I have a really hard time with getting masks and layers to look good, especially when I have fuzzy objects like this one... I have PS Elements 6 and CS 2 as editing tools. Downloaded Gimp 2.8 onto one of our Macs but the interface confuses me as much as ever

One thing i may end up with is just doing it as B/W, that actually looks pretty decent - but I'd really like to fix the color version if I can get some pointers on how to do it without making halos or other problems.


Jim

(B/W conversion in Irfanview)

[todd]

It's a pretty big area but I think with a combination of careful cloning, healing and maybe selective desaturation you could make it work... (I'm a gimp user).. I would just simply duplicate the layer and start trying to clone and heal from different areas and different brush sizes and types and opacities until something started to work (and undoing when things don't work)... Before that I might try playing with some selective desaturation (duplicate the layer then pick a desaturation type that looks best then mask it and try removing the color of that area at different opacities to see what might work or help make the cloning/healing easier...)... My guess is that the larger you need the image the more difficult the task is going to be to really blend it in well...

[Adam]

This is a very tough one. There are essentially two rounds you can go down (unless there's some clever trick I'm missing): either clone it out, or work the colors to suppress the orange cast. I think the latter is the way to go, but both methods are extremely time-consuming. The more time you spend on it, the better the results will be, IMO.

Here's what I managed to get after 30 minutes using the channel mixer, selective colors, and hue/saturation tools combined with the lasso tool with feathering. As you can see, the blob isn't completely gone, put perhaps people won't notice it. A little more work on the light green edge might make this crop usable. Another thing you could do is merge the B&W portion of the image with the color image so that it looks like a could.

[Oldbayrunner]

Photoshop CC 2014 using lasso and content aware fill.

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Last edited by Oldbayrunner; 06-27-2014 at 04:30 PM.

[RoxnDox]

Thanks, everyone. Some good ideas to try. I especially like Adam's thought of copying in a B/W "cloud" version of the blob... I'll poke at it and see what ends up looking best with the tools I have.

Gracias all!

Jim

[SpecialK]

Simple spot-healing in Elements.

[wildman]

Yep it's just a simple clone job as far as I can see...

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Last edited by wildman; 07-02-2014 at 03:46 AM.

[snostorm]

Hi RoxnDox,

I'd suggest that you look at the clone tool. I don't use PS, but in PSP, the clone tool has different modes, with "color" being one of many. You still have a source and target, but in the color mode, all that is cloned from the source is the color. In PSP, cloning the color to match the rest of the mountainside would probably be enough, but might leave what looks like a wispy cloud like what you've got in the B/W version. I usually use about 30% opacity and 0% hardness with this brush. If this is not enough, then you could also use the same brush in the "darken" mode to remove the "cloud".

BTW, the color mode in the clone brush can also be used to fix PF/CA. I find this a better solution than desaturating a specific color channel to remove color aberrations. It's a bit more time intensive, but I find it to be the best tool for photos that count.

Scott

[adwb]

Healing brush, or clone tool or content aware any would work for this simple repair,but with the 2 very old versions of photoshop you have you really only have the clone tool to use

[RoxnDox]

Healing brush, or clone tool or content aware any would work for this simple repair,but with the 2 very old versions of photoshop you have you really only have the clone tool to use

Yeah, that's the main issue now. I may just have to bite the bullet and update :-/ Or learn Gimp...

Jim

[RoxnDox]

Update: I was able to work out an acceptable fix (still not perfect, but acceptable...) on the photo with my old CS2, a combination of layers and levels, hue/saturation, spot healing, and the Burn tool. And lots & lots of patient clicking, backing up and retrying... Thanks to all for the suggestions.

Jim

[Quicksand]

That looks very good. Nice job!

[mikeSF]

yes, nice job on it!