Suggestions for removing mold and water stains???

[happyheart]

Does anyone have a workflow to recommend for removing the mold and water stains that we encounter in these photos?  I've read most of the books; Katrin Eismann, Dan Margulis, etc and experimented with many of their methods, but it seems I always end up with cloning, healing, painting out the colors, etc.  I work with masks, layers, channel blending, etc. but so far haven't found a good way to do this.  Has anyone else? :-\

[Mhayes]

Happyheart, I think you have a very good handle on restoring and each photo is different. The first thing I do is duplicate my original layer and then I do a color correction. From there it is pretty much what needs to be picked first. All of what you mentioned comes in handy at one point, but for the really bad restores, it takes time and patience.

Margie

[happyheart]

I guess I am hoping for someone to come up with the magic bullet :crazy:  I've attended many of the Photoshop World conferences and asked many times for an advanced session for restoration.  Usually what is offered is the standard stuff, like curves, levels, cloning,...you know the drill.  But it seems like the photos we deal with have so many odd ball colors in the most opportune places, that I feel like a bucket of paint spilled!  Whoever knew that mold came in so many pretty vibrant colors?? :funny:  My main problem is that when you start rebuilding the colors and then healing or cloning, you end up with something that looks like plastic rather than skin!  There's got to be some way to restore the texture.  I'm trying to experiment with the Frequency Seperation technique, but so far it isn't working so well.  I think it is mainly because the mold is the 'texture' that is being picked up. 
I saw the tutorial on creating texture and blending it into a blurry area.  I'm going to work on that until I get my first photo from OPR.

[Mhayes]

Happyheart, would you say we tricked you with thumbnails that looked not-so-bad, but then when your pick was download you felt like your distributor had done a bait and switch?  :halo:

You are going to make all of our distributors feel so proud (smug?) when they read this part:

"Whoever knew that mold came in so many pretty vibrant colors?"

OK, we really do hear your misery. Some volunteers may have luck out with the separation technique, but I have seen more bad restores than good. I may use the healing or cloning in small areas and I think starting with CS4 you could see what the cloning would look like before moving it. More often I will use the lasso too and copy areas that I can need and then duplicate that to the layer above. Then I move that area into positron and even do a transform if needed. I like to do a layer mask and conceal all and then paint back in. This gives you a chance to have the same texture and then I may use the patch tool to make sure the edges blend in. When using the lasso, I use a 2 pixel feather, but when I use the Polygonal Lasso I don't feather since I want sharp edges where you have straight edges. Layer Masks are probably your best tool. Unfortunately there are no fast and easy fixes for the dissicult restores.

Margie

[happyheart]

Actually, not this time!   :hug:  I am a returning member, with lots of experience with these photos!  I was just practicing some of the new techniques I found in the forums to see how they work.  I have a couple of past ones saved that I was trying to see if there was an easier way to fix the problems....so far...nOOOOOO!