I'm a newbie using Photoshop CS2. I could use some guidance on this picture. I was hoping there would be an easier way to get rid of the yellow dots besides cloning and healing or taking it back to grayscale and then "painting" the color back in. By the way, those aren't yellow flowers in the grass.

To minimize the clone work you could try playing with the hue/saturation adjustment layers and then using the masks to change the yellow to match the water and the skin tone. But I don't see how else you would get around using the cloning or healing brush.

That's a lot of yellow! I used Selective Color to remove some of the yellow from the whites and Neutrals, and then tried using the Polaroid Dust remover to eliminate as many spots as possible -- I set it on very strong (after duplicating the layer I had already corrected somewhat for color -- so that I can run a layer mask to bring back some of the detail that the Polaroid filter blurs away), and it worked on the spots in the grass and some of the other spots, but not all, and it left a lot to be brought back by painting on the layer mask. So I decided to try a Luminosity mask -- (on a PC - hold Control-Alt-Shift and the tilde ~/` key down together) - the lightest portions of the image are selected. Then I ran the Polaroid Dust remover on the selected pixels -- this affected less of the image, but it took care of the yellow dots on the grass. It did NOT work on the lady's skin or shorts very well, tho. I still had to use a layer mask to bring back the detail in her face, fingers on one hand and toes (and the cup, boat, houses across the bay -- whatever else you want to do). I think it leaves you with less work to do, and this process only takes a few minutes.

Polaroid Dust/Scratch removal tool is a free download - link below
http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/poladsr/poladsr.html

I just painted over some of the areas on the lady. Found that the blur tool seemed to remove spots from the lady. In the sky, I used a 1 px brush to color in some of the area and then used the blur tood and the healing brush in places.Really just fiddled with it.

dc

Thanks for the help. I'm going to give all the tips a try.

Hi there

I color corrected

Used the medium filter...created a snapshot and set the history to this snapshot

went back on history pallet just before the medium filter then used the history brush set to darken and painted the dots away.

Then I used selective color to turn the yellow blue in the water.

Last a noise filter application

Butch

i made selections of the various regions and used Paint Shop Pro's 'color changer' to remove the stains/yellow dots'.

also ran a color balance, curves, clarify and a bit of airbrushing.

i use the degrunge (http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213) method for the woman, especially for arms and legs, this method remove a lot of yellow dots.
i run noiseware for remove last dots on legs and arms, and smooting the color.
level adjustment,
color replace for grass, airbrush in color mode for water and sky.
10-15 mn for this picture.

(sorry for my poor english)

Thanks to all. I think the color replacement will work for the big sections. I'm going to heal and clone my Mom. (That's sounds a little odd.)
Thanks again.

hehe, well, if you could heal her, why clone her :) so, yes, it does sound a bit odd :)

let us know how it turns out. and, you're welcome.

Hard work.