OK, I appeal to the Photoshop gurus (real or otherwise ) out here...
I have a scanned image of a scene in Moab (Turret Arch through the Windows) that has a stark, clear blue sky. Apparently, on the scan, on the left part of the sky seen through the Window, there's a kind of blotchy-ness in there from half-bubbles in the mount (no visible lines like bubbles, but the transparency shows a clean sky).
Usually, I just blur the heck out of the sky and it blends nicely enough to work when I have small imperfections, but this one seems a bit stubborn. I tried smudging but the blue gradient goes from both top to bottom as well as right to left (from polarization).
Does anyone have any other techniques to try to clean this up without making it look weird? Or am I stuck with rescanning this? (sigh)
Dave, can you post the image so we can see the problem?
Have you tried the Clone Stamp and/or Healing Brush?
In extreme cases, if you're comfortable working with layer masks you may be able to rebuild the sky completely, using gradients and adding grain/noise to match the rest of the transparency.
You'll need to weigh the time and effort of all this against just rescanning.
Posted by Laurie Wendt on June 3, 2008 at 12:42 PM
I usually just use the healing brush with a soft edged brush to clean up bubbles or dust spots. Just depends how bad it is. Option click on another area of the sky to take a sample then brush over the bad area.
I should preface this with the warning that I fall into the category of "otherwise" guru. For something on the edge of the photo, just using the healing brush usually doesn't work too well. I use the clone stamp first to get it somewhat close and then use the healing brush to get it to blend better into the rest of the sky.
I deal with this in several ways.
1. Healing brush
2. Lens Blur
3. Noise reduction tool of choice
For each of these perform the change on a duplicate layer in PS. Then cut out all the others areas besides the sky portion in question. If none of these work then rescan as per RichieV.
This relates to one of Nat's suggestions, but you can create a new fill layer that is a solid color (sample one of the colors in your sky) and erase the non-sky portions of the photo in the new layer. Experiment with the opacity or fill in the layers box so that the sky doesn't look like one solid color, but instead blends more into the rest of the image. This will reduce the appearance of imperfections in the background layer.
As Nat suggested, a gradient fill layer might be needed too, but I've sometimes found that PS gradient layers alone don't blend well and create the appearance of lines even with serious blurring. Adding a little bit of grain might help the new layers appear more natural.
Clone stamp and healing brush were ineffective in removing this--I usually start there anyhow. You can see from the sample below that the left side of the arch is blotchy, and the right is fine.
This looks like posterization to me.
Often happens in blank areas like skies when one edits in low bit environments (8 bits/channel). About the only fixes are introducing a whole new sky or adding grain, none of which are attractive alternatives. No brushes, blurs, smudges or noise reduction will touch this, as you've already discovered.
Assuming that a rescan will fix this, I would certainly recommend it.
Dave - I am not sure what type of scanner you used, but this looks like neither a drum nor flatbed scanner issue. Bubbles under a mylar mount usually show up as very defined circles with a thin edge.
It looks more light puffy clouds or remnants of a con-trail.
Depending on the effort/cost of a rescan, you might consider copying the image to a new layer and running a Gaussian blur. Then mask out everything but the sky with a soft brush.
Discussion
11 repliesI have a scanned image of a scene in Moab (Turret Arch through the Windows) that has a stark, clear blue sky. Apparently, on the scan, on the left part of the sky seen through the Window, there's a kind of blotchy-ness in there from half-bubbles in the mount (no visible lines like bubbles, but the transparency shows a clean sky).
Usually, I just blur the heck out of the sky and it blends nicely enough to work when I have small imperfections, but this one seems a bit stubborn. I tried smudging but the blue gradient goes from both top to bottom as well as right to left (from polarization).
Does anyone have any other techniques to try to clean this up without making it look weird? Or am I stuck with rescanning this? (sigh)
Thanks,
-D
Have you tried the Clone Stamp and/or Healing Brush?
In extreme cases, if you're comfortable working with layer masks you may be able to rebuild the sky completely, using gradients and adding grain/noise to match the rest of the transparency.
You'll need to weigh the time and effort of all this against just rescanning.
I know exactly what you are talking about. There isnt a good way to fix these and make it non-obvious. Mount it again and re-scan.
RichieV
1. Healing brush
2. Lens Blur
3. Noise reduction tool of choice
For each of these perform the change on a duplicate layer in PS. Then cut out all the others areas besides the sky portion in question. If none of these work then rescan as per RichieV.
As Nat suggested, a gradient fill layer might be needed too, but I've sometimes found that PS gradient layers alone don't blend well and create the appearance of lines even with serious blurring. Adding a little bit of grain might help the new layers appear more natural.
Clone stamp and healing brush were ineffective in removing this--I usually start there anyhow. You can see from the sample below that the left side of the arch is blotchy, and the right is fine.
http://coyoteimages.com/Sample.png
I have a bad feeling Richie is right.
Often happens in blank areas like skies when one edits in low bit environments (8 bits/channel). About the only fixes are introducing a whole new sky or adding grain, none of which are attractive alternatives. No brushes, blurs, smudges or noise reduction will touch this, as you've already discovered.
Assuming that a rescan will fix this, I would certainly recommend it.
It looks more light puffy clouds or remnants of a con-trail.
Depending on the effort/cost of a rescan, you might consider copying the image to a new layer and running a Gaussian blur. Then mask out everything but the sky with a soft brush.
Hope this helps.
He is using a D4000 like me. I tend to see stuff like this most often when there is some kind of fluid or smudge on the mylar outside of the drum.
RichieV