How to remove stains or spots from a photo

[Flora]

Continuing from above...

... In Attachment 1 you can see my colour correction on the inside of the glass using this method .... A bit overdone, but I wanted the difference to be very clear .... I used this method to correct the discolorations on faces, hair, jacket etc. as well...

For this example I used a Brush Opacity of 60%, but, usually, I start with 25/30% Opacity and gradually add/correct the colour with different passes...

6) After the colour correction, I run the picture through Neat Image to minimize the remaining noise ... (Attachment 2)

... and in Attachment 3 you can see the before and after ... the spots, colour or otherwise are gone, the skin is nice and smooth, and no loss of definition...

Originally Posted by Gerald McClaren

I had noticed that in your demonstration that you had used three color balance for the midtones, shadows, and highlights. Third, In the layer pallette, I saw only one color balance. Were there two more color balance that were hidden?

No hidden Color Balance Adjustment Layers at all... Once open, the Color Balance Adjustment Layer allows you to correct midtones, shadows, and highlights in one go... meaning, after correcting the midtones, do not click OK, but, still in the same Color Balance Adjustment Layer, simply click on the radio button on the left of 'Highlights' and correct them ... repeat the procedure with the 'Shadows' and only then click OK!! = 1 single Color Balance Adjustment Layer for colour corrections in all the different areas of your image... (Attachment 4)

Originally Posted by Gerald McClaren

I started with the midtone, I adjusted the CYAN-RED, clicked on shadow and adjusted the MAGENTA-GREEN, clicked on highlights and adjusted the YELLOW-BLUE. I clicked on OK to complete the color balance adjustment on the photo. I was using that method for a long time on all of my photos. I had noticed that you had used three color balance on the midtones, shadows, and highlights. Please tell me if I was using the color balance incorrectly.

Depending on the colours you want to correct, you might have to tweak either only CYAN-RED or MAGENTA-GREEN or YELLOW-BLUE in either only midtones or shadows or highlights .... but sometimes, like in this picture, I tweaked all the ranges in all 3 areas ... and, as I explained in the previous point, you can do it all in one single go!

Hope this helps..

[Cameraken]

Hi Gerald.

I remember doing lots of these. They were very popular in the seventies. We usually did them on Cibachrome paper by combining two slides. They were quite tricky to do but were very popular with a bride and groom.

Great job everyone, and great explanation Flora

I tried a different way; I Did use the Red channel.

Rotated to straighten
Image > Apply Image to replace blue channel with Red
Hue/Sat to correct colours
Degrunged the faces
Added back the missing glass rim
Duplicated layer set to overlay (Selective)
Blank Layers set to
Sharpened (Selective)



Ken.

[4N6site]

I think there is only one real stain in this photo, and that's a big blue one. The stains you notice are probably 'holes' in the blue stain. The attached picture shows the result of using the color deconvolution plug-in to remove the blue stain from the photo. After that some overall color correction. I did not use any brush, mask, selection or noise filtering. You can get the color deconvolution plug-in at 4N6site.com.

Originally Posted by Gerald McClaren

The actual size of this photo is approximately 2x3. I am suppose to enlarge it to about 8.5x11, however, while attempting to enlarge this photo, I had noticed that the gentlemen jacket and face is completely full of black and orange spots. The woman face is also full of orange or red spots. I would like to know if this photo can be salvage. I had never seen so much spots or stains on a photo like this before. How can I remove those spots from the whole photo?


Gerald McClaren