How to eliminate a rolling shutter artifact of a lightning photo?

[lightning_john]

Dear Gurus!

I have captured several lightning strikes with my iPhone 5. (no I am not fast, I used a small app, that triggers the camera when lightning occurs). Most pictures are very pleasant, but about 20% have a rolling shutter artifact. This occurs when the lightning oscillates during image read out of the cmos sensor.

I have attached one of the image that offers such an artifact. Does anyone of you could me give some suggestions how to get rid of this artifact?

I have tried contextbased filling.
Different layers with 'lighten' blend mode.
Pencil with lighten fill mode.



My own results are simply not good.

I would be thankful for any help.

john

 

[iDad]

Try using the clone tool with surrounding area

 

[iDad]

that's going to be a challenge, I gave it a go. its going to be very time consuming

 

[lightning_john]

wow, that was quick! Thanks idad.
Sorry, I did not mention, but I tried this approach with different size of cloed area. It works, but it needs a lot of time to get around the lightning lines.

I also tried to select only the sky so that the lightning lines are not affected, but the brightness differences make it difficult. I was hoping that there is some gradient autofill that could smooth out the horizontal artifact.

 

[lightning_john]

sorry, I did not see your second post before I answered ..

 

[iDad]

Yeah I tried different layers different modes its going to be very tricky I don't think there's going to be away around time consumption problems

 

[iDad]

I just thought of something maybe you can duplicate the layer take the top layer and flip it over vertically and manipulate it up a bit and do some erasing of the top layer

 

[iDad]

Challenge is eating me up LOL

How about this idea,


select a dark area Feather it maybe 10 pixels or so depending on what the original photos dpi is, use the brightness contrast filter until you're pleased with it and after you're done you'll only have to manipulate the line to blend maybe using color smudge at midrange tolerance or level

 

[lightning_john]

sounds good, i am still troubles with the gradient right at the brightness jump. the smudge tool blurs the noise of the image and this looks artificial. I will continue trying your suggestions tomorrow. thanks!

 

[iDad]

Try making a small thin enough selection that will match over that line from the lighter areas and manipulate in place

 

[lightning_john]

HI iDad

so it took some time, not perfect, but pretty good for an amateur.
As suggested, I selected the dark area, control c and control v to have it on an new plane. (without new plane the selection rectangle makes it difficult to find the same tone) then I used contrast brightness control (contrast 0, brightness +30) .
then I selected the small horizontal band that stayed and hit 'del' with context based refilling. then I selected the remaining small gradient an used the gauss filter 40.
then I used a very large brush with the brighten mode and picked the color very close to remaining slight brightness jump and smoothed it out. then I used the the smudge tool (small diameter) and the clone tool to restore the lightning lines.
I will post the different steps as images in the next days.
thanks, any suggestions to enhance the quality or the speed are appreciated
john