Hi,

I'm a first-time poster here, although I've been lurking around for a while. There seems to be just so much information here that a person can get quite overwhelmed browsing through it all. So please forgive me if this sort of help has been requested before...

I grabbed the enclosed picture on a recent visit to a safari park. As you can see, the car's windscreen was a bit mucky from the rain, and this has resulted in the camel's head losing a lot of contrast compared to the rest of its body, so I was looking for hints on ways that I might bring out the details in that area. I'd quite like to keep the raindrops, though: just get rid of the dirt.

I use PSP8 on WindowsXP. I also have Serif Photoplus 9.0 (but I don't use it much). I can't afford to be a (legal) Photoshop user...

Thanks in advance.

Perhaps I should add that, yes, I have tried playing with the contrast adjustment, but maybe I'm just too clumsy with the controls or I'm going at it all wrong, but it doesn't come out quite right. I suppose I was just wondering if there was any approach that maybe comes as a result of some lateral thinking, rather than the obvious adjustments.

Welcome aboard Bloodnok!!

I ran Levels adjustment on each individual channel.
Selected the hazy portion with Poly Lasso feathered at 5 pixel.
Sharpened using High Pass set to 10. Faded and changed to Overlay.
Used Selective Coloring: Neutrals and increased black so selected area matches rest of pic.

I use PS CS so I don't know if any of this translates to your program. If I can clarify anything, please let me know.

Cheers
Dave

Thanks. That's certainly an improvement. I think I can translate most of the stuff to PSP. Not sure what you mean by "Faded and changed to Overlay", though.

I have to laugh.

Having had contact with a camel before, I think you can be very glad that your window was up. I'm sorry the picture blurred. In fact, if it were mine, I might cry (or not). However, you can be glad that you had 1. no camel bad breath, 2. no camel spit (ooohhh yucky!!!), and 3. no head in your car.... oh, and 4. NO STENCH!

I selected the blurred area and placed it on it's own layer, then used Photoshop CS's match color option. If you don't have CS try adjusting with hue and saturation. And then apply a new layer set to color mode and paint in a little brown over the grayish sections. For a bit of fine-tuning I tweaked the colors with Selective Color (Image>Adjustments>Selective Color)

1. Duplicate Image
2. Lasso blurred area and place on own layer
3. Apply Match Color (Photoshop CS) matching to the good color side of the image
4. Tweak colors in lasso area with Selective Color
5. USM

When you run the High Pass filter, you get a semi greyscale image. You should have a means in PSP8 to change the blend mode to Overlay, Hard Light or whatever suits you, and to be able to dial in the amount of sharpness you want.

Dave

I used PS CS on this one. I duped the layer, set the blend mode to Multiply, adjusted the opacity and added a layer mask using a gradient (messily applied here, but you get the idea :)

From there I adjusted contrast and color using curves and selective color.

Those are brilliant. Thanks to everyone who helped. I'll give them a go when I've got time over the weekend and see how well I can do.

To Janet Petty: the smell was still noticable, even with closed windows!

Hi,
I liked Pam's Idea. but I did it slightly differently.
I used screen mode on the duplicate layer and adjusted the opacity..applying only the damaged part of the photo.

Then I played with levels, curves, hue saturation, selective color etc to match to the other fur.

Then added a warming photo filter on the camel...and replaced the sky.....

Thanks for posting this....I learned alot trying this one...
Wide Angle.

WideAngle, very nice job!