How to Correct For a Spot With PS?

[tgtaylor]

Here's a salt print that I made years ago of the commercial fishing marina behind famous Alioto's Restaurant in Fisherman's Warf in San Francisco. Alioto was once the mayor of San Francisco and this restaurant was recently closed for good. https://sf.eater.com/2022/4/11/23020...-san-francisco. I ran across this print earlier today sitting under a stack of things which may have caused the circular quarter-like spot appearing in the sky area at the upper left. Holding the print the spot isn't as pronounced as in the scan but still noticeable. Apparently I didn't care much for the print after I printed it either because of the spot or that the railing I was shooting over encroach into the image . Anyway my question is how does one blend in the spot with the rest of the sky using Photoshop CS3?

Thomas

[Chester McCheeserton]

There are dozens of ways that this could be fixed, although I don't have a copy of cs3 in front of me so can't remember exactly what tools you have available. If memory serves me correct there is no content aware fill in CS3. What I would do is duplicate the background layer, grab the polygonal lasso tool, and make a rough outline around the spot making sure to stay in the darker 'correct' part of the sky, don't try to select the transition exactly. Then I would feather the selection 20-50 pixels depending on your scan size. (can't remember how to do that in cs3 but google could help you or someone else could chime in) Then I would select the patch tool, which should be visible if you right click the band aid tool. Then click inside the selection and try sampling from the clean sky to the right. Or you could try the left but you might then have to clone stamp out some unwanted antenna from that seiner, which I believe is a 38 foot Ledford.

[Vaughn]

Difficult to tell how different it is in tone vs color, but how about going to B&W, which would remove the difference in color the spot is making. Then see how much lightening or darkening is needed.

Then add back a tint to match the original.

[martiansea]

The tool you'd usually use is Healing Brush. The content aware one is only in newer PS, but I'm pretty sure the "normal" Healing Brush is in the older versions. As already mentioned, Patch or Clone Stamp are other tools that can do it. CS3 will definitely at least have Clone Stamp.

In any case, I never do spotting retouches on the original pixel layer. I create a new empty layer above it, and then tell the tool to sample from "Current Layer and Below," so that it will be getting its sample from the original image, but it's painting the retouch onto a new layer on top of it. The reason is that then the retouching is nondestructive and you can easily go back and selectively erase or blend in retouching work. This can be especially helpful if you end up using the Clone Stamp, which can sometimes look really obvious if not blended well - depends on the image.

If your computer is less than 10 years old, there are good options available for updating to modern software without an Adobe subscription. Affinity is my personal choice.

[martiansea]

I gave it a try on that little image just to see what tools seemed to work best. It ended up being Healing Brush on the spot in the sky and Clone Stamp on the railing.

[tgtaylor]

Thanks a lot guys for your help! I fixed it this morning using the Healing Brush tool and Clone Stamp. I tried the latter yesterday before posting but the spot was too big for it, I guess, and left a circle. The brush blended it in perfectly.

Thomas

[Paul Ron]

clone it out using the neighboring sky as the clone sample so the color n texture matches.

[Alan Klein]

In Lightroom (Purchased Licensed V6), I can never figure out which is better: the healing or the clone stamp?

[martiansea]

In Lightroom (Purchased Licensed V6), I can never figure out which is better: the healing or the clone stamp?

Healing brush is almost always the best choice for retouching spots and flaws. Clone stamp is more for making a direct copy of something. It's possible to finesse Clone Stamp to get an end result more like the Healing Brush, but the majority of the time, in my experience, Healing Brush will look better with less effort.

[Paul Ron]

here is a quick fix clone correction. want better results, ya just gotta spend more time finessing it in. Adjusting the transparancy gives you better control over what you are covering.