In need of help here , please ...

[marlene]

I need help with all those white spots on the photo , I tried different things like the dust filter , etc .and just end up with too much detail lost in the man's face . There are too may of those spots to do it all with cloning .
this is the first edit :


this is the second edit and the one I don't know how to clean up without loss of detail :
:-\

[Hannie]

Hi Marlene,

There are different ways to get rid of all of those white spots.  I can explain the 2 methods I use mostly:
The best, and I use it a lot, is to zoom in at 400% or more and heal as many spots as possible.  It seems like a lot of work but once you get started it goes pretty fast and the result is beautiful.

The other method I use, again I zoom in at 400% and heal some of the larger easy to get spots in important areas such as the man's face, shirt etc.
Then I add a Dust and Scratches layer and still zoomed in at 400% bring both sliders back all the way to the left.  First bring the top slider (radius) far enough to the right so the spots don't show any more.  (don't worry about losing detail, we will fix that later)  Usually 1 or 2 pixels is enough, maybe 3.

Next bring the bottom slider (Threshold) to the right, just far enough for detail to reappear but no spots.  (probably around 12 levels)

Hope this helps!

Hannie

[marlene]

Thank you Hannie , I will give that a try . What you did to the photo looks so great !

[Johnboy]

Marlene,

When you do any healing it is best to do that on a separate layer. That way if anything doesn't look right you can trash that layer or use the Erase tool to selectively remove any healing and start over.  You may want to consider using a new layer for healing different parts of the photo such as the couch, the man, the woman, etc.. That way if something goes wrong you only have a smaller portion to start over. When you do use a healing layer it is best to place the layer above any color correction layers you may have used. I learned this from Katrin Eismann's book Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Before I found this trick I tried placing healing layers under the color correction layers ending in blotchy results which ended in the trash. You may also consider the Patch tool used on a copy of a background layer. Watch that you don't use the Erase tool on any of the Background layers or you will loose part of the image. I have done that too. Use the History palette to go back to a start over point when using the Patch tool.

I hope  some of this may help your situation.

Johnboy

[lurch]

Marlene - the pronounced blue in the shadows has to be damage; we often see color shifts like that. And I found it really distracting. My attempts at doing an easy fix fell sort of flat, however. Here's what I ended up with, starting from the version you posted here last:


Started out by setting neutral points, using the black, white, and gray spots indicated. Then I used a couple of luminosity masks (refer to http://www.goodlight.us/writing/luminositymasks/luminositymasks-5.html) to isolate the shadows and fiddled with the curves until the blue was minimized. Since Grandma's hair still looked too magenta I did some additional color correction confined to that. (Painted with a soft white brush at 20% opacity in a hide-all mask until it looked right.)

As to your original question, here really isn't much of a substitute for healing or cloning out all the spots, particularly on faces. For relatively large, featureless areas you can use the dust and scratches filter and a hide-all mask, then paint over those areas on the mask with a white brush. If you're fortunate enough to be using Photoshop CS5, content-aware healing and fill can (sometimes) do wonders.

[marlene]

thank you all for your help . I'm working on the photo now and I will try to do my best .
I'm glad I can come here and ask ! :up: