Need to correct lint/smudge defect in an image.

[bleah]

I just finished traveling S.E. Asia and took thousands of photos. Unfortunately a piece of lint got caught on the inner lens of my camera and caused a smudge/lint line to appear about 1/4 of the photos I took. Its relatively easy to pshop out the smudge mark when the defect area is a solid, or nearly uniform area such as sky (clone or bandaid tool, etc). But when it gets into something more complex, such as buildings or otherwise, its going to need a little more manipulation. I am curious to see how members of this community would fix this. I've attached a rather tame image so as to demonstrate the problem. You can see the obvious anomaly in the upper 1/3 of the right margin. I'd really appreciate some feedback on this.

 

[bleah]

here's a couple of images taken on uniform background as more examples.

 

[theKeeper]

Hi bleah, welcome to the community. [excited]

I suggest you simply use the Clone tool and clone over the lint with sections immediately above and below the lint.

You could also try using the Healing Brush as well. Same technique.

Try that.

If you're not up on the Clone tool or have any other specific questions, just ask.

 

[Klaatu Baradda Nikto]

Greetings Bleah,

Mark is right, this is a job for the Amazing Clone Stamp Tool!

When using it on an image like this (where symmetrical lines are affected) it's important to set your anchor point in the right place.

Because this image has distortion, you'll notice that the building lines gradually angle towards the vanishing-point (somewhere on the planet Neptune).

Problem: If you start with a nice anchor point for one line, a few lines over there is suddenly a noticeable misalignment.

Fix: You'll need to set your Clone anchor-point very often to match the lines. This shouldn't take very long with a small fix like this but it can be time consuming with other images. Hopefully you don't have TOO many to fix.

 

[mflintjer]

Nice Job Klaatu!! Looks really good!!

8)) 8))

 

[theKeeper]

Nice job Klaatu.

You can also use the Healing Brush tool to completely remove any subtle mismatching in colouration created from cloning.
Simply size your brush to match the width of the blemish (soft brush), click on a spot just below the miscoloured area, them swipe the tool along the miscoloured area. The tool should take the sampled area's colour and apply it over the miscoloured area.

I'd also highly recommend you use a new layer for this type of thing. Just click the "Use all layers" option in the Options Bar for these tools. That will allow you to create new pixel data on a new layer in case it takes a few tries to nail the solution. When you're down and satisfied, you can merge the layers together if you want.

 

[bleah]

Excellent suggestions everyone. Thank you for replying. Not to demean anyone, but i purposely chose an image that could be easily remedied using the clone and heal tools, to illustrate the challenge. Maybe I should upload an image that is a little more difficult to fix, where the smudge is in a complex area covering plants and buildings, etc. I was hoping there might be a solution with blending modes .. or ?

 

[kiwi]

I find sometimes that {after clone and patch etc] it can be a lot easier just copying an area and pasting it,like the silo image above,just copy a lower section and paste it and move it up some pixels.It might need a lil skewing as well.


PLants and building sounds like a challenge fire it on up here bleah

 

[mflintjer]

To quote Kiwi, and the movie "The Crow" (my all-time fav):

"Fire It Up, Fire It Up, Fire It Up, Fire It Up!!" 8}

 

[Klaatu Baradda Nikto]

I was hoping there might be a solution with blending modes .. or ?

Hello Again bleah,
Hmmm... Blending Modes, eh?

We did a little quick experimenting and came up with a way to repair this picture using a Blending Mode (at least to do the biggest part).

1) Enter Quick Mask Mode (press Q).
2) using a very Soft Brush (about the size of the string of lint), paint over the lint in the image.
3) Exit Quick Mask (press Q again)
4) Copy & Paste the selection (this will create a new layer above the background layer)
5) Set the Blending Mode to Screen and the Opacity to about 25% (play with this).

At this point, it hides much of the lint but a slight color distortion can still be seen. So...

6) Create a New empty layer above this layer and Jump Merge all the layers to this (press cmd/cntrl+opt/alt+shift+E)
7) Create another New empty layer above this.
8) Grab the Clone Tool and set it to Color, Aligned and Use All Layers. Paint over the lint area.

We think this actually resulted in a BETTER correction than using the Clone Tool alone (as in our first attempt).