retouching out a condensation spot - help! :)

simonfarrington

I have a question that I was hoping that someone could help me with.

I recently shot a job for a client; off figure clothing for an e-com website. Unbeknownst to me, there was a lighter patch on the images. This came from a spot on my ccd (canon 20d). I did some research and the spot was apparently caused by a dried condensation droplet.

Ive since had the camera cleaned, but Im stuck with like 375 files that I need to kill this spot from, before I submit the images to the client.

The lighting was the same throughout the shoot, and I was bracketing for white-on-white. The colours of the garments all vary as well.

What Im wondering is, the spot was on the ccd, its on the exact same area of each frame, though its only apparent against the darker colours. Is there a way that I can make a transparent mask layer to correct the spot using some sort of levels/density filter in photoshop that I can then apply to each frame (id love to use a batch,script, but even with a set layer its looks like its going to be one at a time)?

I want to avoid just using the burn tool, as it seems too rough for this type of application.

Im including some shots for reference as well.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated

Simon

simonfarrington

the forum didn't allow for very big files, so aside from the pixelation, you can see the spot just to the right of centre, and over the silkscreen on the shirt. Im sure that there are folks out there who have had this problem, so any input would be really cool

ziggy53

Welcome to the Digital Grin and sorry that your first post involves such angst.

Since there is only one image to see, I am assuming the problem area is a rather large and sweeping whitish, comma shaped slur.

Unless you have a single, or few, frames with black under the area, it might be difficult to create a mask of just the problem. It would be worth searching for those types of images however.

Your best tool for manual repair is the Clone tool, which I recommend you become quite familiar with as it is IMO much more powerful than the Burn tool.

Good luck.

simonfarrington

More of a lighter splotch.....

yeah its a bit of a mess, i was thinking of using the brush tool to create a mask layer and then applying it and using the levels or curves slider to adjust... on the mask layer?

ziggy53 wrote:

Welcome to the Digital Grin and sorry that your first post involves such angst.

Since there is only one image to see, I am assuming the problem area is a rather large and sweeping whitish, comma shaped slur.

Unless you have a single, or few, frames with black under the area, it might be difficult to create a mask of just the problem. It would be worth searching for those types of images however.

Your best tool for manual repair is the Clone tool, which I recommend you become quite familiar with as it is IMO much more powerful than the Burn tool.

Good luck.

ziggy53

OK, I think I understand. Here is a brief treatment that you could probably turn into an Action against your originals.

First, I created a copy of the Background so I could bring up the gamma to make the affected area more visible. Then I dropped some guides around the area and then switched back to the "normal" layer.



I drew an Elliptical Marquee inside the area defined by the guides.



Then I "feathered" the selection to a factor of 9 and created a "Layer via Copy".



Working with this layer visible against the Background and using Levels, I used this adjustment:



This is the result:



(Hmmm, still needs a little work, but hopefully better?)

ziggy53

Try Levels (input) of 19, 1.10, 255.

simonfarrington

That worked great!

I varied things a bit by first creating a blank layer of the whole image (for snapping later) then a super soft mask brush to grab the shape of the spot.

Deselect, and then select inverse, create a levels adjustment layer and change the levels to match.

Link the adjustment layer to the blank full frame layer (so it can snap to the same geography in the frames im dropping it in), select them both, and then drag and drop.

I then combined the two layers with a macro action, made any adjustments (opacity, selective erasing, free transform) where necessary, and then annother action to flatten and close.

Worked out pretty good!

Thanks

S

ziggy53 wrote:

Try Levels (input) of 19, 1.10, 255.