Calling PS phenoms for help with water spots

Howdy~
I so hope someone has some feedback for me on this. I just got a freelance job cleaning/sharpening and generally making beautimous, about 100 deep sea photos...all was going according to plan, when I came upon a large group that, as soon as I brought the levels up, along came these horrific sprays of water spotting, that I have no idea how to deal with. I don't think there's a way to make it look real if I use a tool like the clone or bandaid, and I tried working in LAB mode, to see if there was any way I could make a difference with the gaussian blur, but that did nothing, and that may just have been hopefull. I can't remove the guys background, and I know there are some extra softwear programs that work with spotting etc. but in this case I can't see how they would work and still keep the picture sharp..?Is there a way that I can do a layer mask to fix this and if so...how and in what mode would anyone suggest? help..acck..drowning I thought I saw an area that would allow me to post a pic, but now I don't see it...am I able to post an example for you guys somewhere on here?

Me again. I set up a little Ofoto album with some examples, and you should be able to past this link, and log in using [email]road_runner4@sbcglobal.net[/email] password -fotogurl
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=62eukjv.xir079n&x=1&y=ujsuw4

along came these horrific sprays of water spotting, that I have no idea how to deal with. I don't think there's a way to make it look real if I use a tool like the clone or bandaid

I believe those are just particles floating in the water that was near the lens of the camera when the photo was taken, not water splotches. You know, part of the picture, so it is real in a way. That means that it's probably not unusual to see stuff like that in a photo so you shouldn't really worry about it.

But anyway, photo one and four may be extremely hard to fix because it's covering objects in the background. Two and three, however, might be salvageable. The Kodak gallery won't let me view the full size photo (at least I can't figure it out) so I can't provide specifics until I do.

I don't think there's a way to make it look real if I use a tool like the clone

Thats really the point of the clone tool. The only problem would be time, cause thats a lot of work. But with the clone tool, you'll keep a level of sharpness and detail that may be worth the effort.


Quick fix for the first image :

1) Pop into channels. Select the red & sample a color (just so its not full black). With a big fuzzy brush, paint over most of the bubbles.
2) Do the same for the green channel.
3) Now the blue channel, feather a selection around the bubbles and gaussian blur a bit. Its ok if you dont remove all the bubbles. You can fix that by using the blue channel in curves. Sample a bright bubble(highlight), and also sample a close midtone. Then just lower the highlight until the bubble and midtone are fairly equal.
4) Now just add a layer of noise to either reduce the blur or add detail.


You'll lose detail/sharpness this way. If you use curves the same way on the green you might retain a little more information. You'll also lose a little bit of tone, but the result is fairly decent.

Try playing around with a combo of those to see what works.

step 1: contact the client and say "i know we had talked about this amount, but i just found this and that's going to take a LOT more time to do." renegotiate.

step 2: do what they said it is going to take some work with the clone tool/healing brush, but definitely doable.

chris

Smashing.Thank you for the EXACT steps(from all of you), it's what I haven't been able to find! Now I have a direction to follow, yay~
I'm going to see how it works now, and I'll let you know. Sorry about the pics, unfortunately the resize destroys the clarity. They're so much worse at at 8-10 MB......by the way, I'm assuming that I should be in LAB mode(?)for the channel correction, but I'll do one in RGB as well in case that's not right. Thank you !!!Happy dance~

Let us know the results, Kelly!

We have a photography section here as well! I know it says 'digital' but we'd love to see some of your work, and have you participate in discussions. We'll help you with some of the digital darkroom stuff, you help us with f-Stops and lighting!