Dealing with White dots

[rockthumper]

Hi all,
Here's a sample of the photo I'm working on and I'm beginning to run out of ideas for removing all these white dots where they are thickest. I assume this is the dreaded mould growing on the photo?


I've resorted to painting over the top of them in plain areas and I can clone them away or heal them where they are more widely scattered but when they are densely packed cloning is not possible and the healing just makes an unpleasant grey blotch as does the burn tool. The spots/flecks are greyish white so they appear in all the channels fairly equally.
At the moment, in the areas where there is pattern or texture, I think I'll just have to paint over each speck, which is getting really labour intensive!
Is there a better way?

[klassylady25]

There is a way, but sometimes it takes away a bit of the definition with the process if it is on a larger scale as this seems to be.  Let me know if this is something you might think would help and I'll write it out. 

Candy

[rockthumper]

Thanks for your reply. It looks like you did some kind of blur and re-sharpen?

Edit: Please tell me what you did to make the white specks so much brighter. That could be useful.

[glennab]

Hi RT

Here's another possibility, using the patch tool.  I didn't spend too much time, but the idea is to patch the small dots with contiguous areas of the color you want, and as you progress you can use larger and larger areas for patching.  I wouldn't recommend making your patch areas too large, because you begin to lose definition.  This is tedious, but I think it does a pretty good job of keeping texture and getting rid of the light dots, especially in areas where they don't virtually cover the area you're trying to repair.  Circle the dots and the area slightly outside the dots and move the patch to the closest area in size and color to what you want replaced.  For this kind of damage, I've had the best luck using mostly patching, but also cloning near edges where I want more definition.

Here's the D & D version -- the patched areas are obvious, and some look better than others.



Hope this helps.  You have your work cut out, for sure.

Bless,

Glenna

P.S.  The remaining blotchiness can be minimized by patching several times in the same place, especially if there's a lot of color difference between the dots and surrounding areas.  (Healing is another possibility once you get to that point.)

[rockthumper]

Thank you Glenna. Your 'patches' look pretty good. Unfortunately I don't speak Photoshop so I'm not sure what the equivalent of a patch tool is in Paint Shop Pro?
I'm guessing, since you talk about selecting sampling areas,  that:
Clone = Clone
Heal = Makeover
Patch = Object Remover???

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Hi RT. I took the pic into PaintShop Pro and used add/remove noise-automatic small scratch removal. I chose only white specks and agressive action. Then ran a high pass sharpen on it. It's not perfect but it gives you much more to use the blemish tool on.

[Hannie]

Hi Rockthumper,

Here's my 2 cents worth on the white dots, I use Photoshop but maybe you will recognize what settings you have to use in Paint Shop Pro.

You can use a Dust and Scratches filter.  Move the radius slider almost until you can no longer see the white specks.  Then move to threshold slider until you can start to see the texture of the background reemerge but don't see much of the specks.

Create a Snapshot in the History Palette.  Change your state back to the original (damaged) layer.
Now move the history brush icon to your snapshot and click anywhere with the History brush on the white specks (brush blending mode on Darken).

(In the example I only cleaned up the dark patch in the upper left corner and the top part of the leg in front, due to lack of time...)

Hannie

[kiska]

Rock,

Could you post the original full size showing the area below ( not the whole image). I have the closeup of this one and need some help with the saddle. If I remember, it was pretty good on your version.....or was it?

http://upload.pbase.com/image/85226454

[rockthumper]

Kiska - yes the saddle was pretty well untouched in mine. Here it is:


Tassie D - Thanks that looks handy, I'll hold it in reserve.

Hannie - What you've done looks really good. Unfortunately I don't have a clue how you did it. I don't recognise those functions at all. :-(

[kiska]

THANKS! Got it. kissee kissee!

[Ausimax]

Hi Rockthumper,

Unfortunately I don't speak PSP so I don't know the equivalent tools, I did this mainly with the Healing tool and clone tool and a touch of smudge in places.

I worked with a small brush about twice the size of the spots with the healing tool, a slow, tedious procedure but it gets you there in the end.



Hope it is of some help.

Max

[schen]

I am having the similar problem.  I believe mine was caused by the texture of the paper.

I am trying to use Dust and Scratches noise filter then mask the eyes and the teeth.

[klassylady25]

Have you ever tried to use the FFT RGB filter?  It works very well for the textures on pictures and news print.

http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=185


By klassylady25

[rockthumper]

Ausimax - Thanks for that. Your edit looks good but sounds like a lot of hard work. I was hoping to come up with something Extremely Clever which avoided that. Still working on it ...

Schen - you've cut the snow back pretty well.

[schen]

My older version of PS7 does not have FFT.  I read somewhere that I might be able to download a plug-in but I have not found a free one yet.  If I have to pay for one, I will save the money toward upgrading my Photoshop.