How to remove particles/noise/"dust"?

[MartinNorway78]

Dear Photoshops Gurus!

Sometimes when I do "wide angle" model-shots I get these particles in the shot,
how can I remove these?

foe example in this shot:

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Maybee this one is too tricky to fix, but hope u get the picture...

how can i make the deep blue "clearer"?

Appriciate any comments..

Br
Martin

 

[lrossel]

Hy Martin,

What particles you mean? I saw your picture, and I can't see a big backscatter problem.

If you mean about the right side of the picture, maybe you can try the healing tool of photoshop. This tool "clean" the small particles of a picture.

 

[Doubler]

1. You are to far from the subject.

2. Your strobe placement should be out to the side. Placing it in front

just lights up the particles.

3. Get Photoshop Elements, use the Clone and Heal tools

 

[MartinNorway78]

Thanks for the "heal" tool trick. I have never used it before. I will have great use of if gor other pics at least... this one I guess will not get much better/worse....

thx again the both of you

 

[danclem]

Hi Martin:

Here are a couple of more suggestions. First, check out LightRoom. You can use it for about 90% of your processing, and the spot removal (actually a clone and stamp) works pretty well. I think it is a superior product for most photographic needs than either Elements or CS3.

Second, in CS3 or Elements there are spot healing and clone and stamp. The CS3 spot healing is a bit better than Elements. Most folks prefer the clone and stamp method instead of the spot healing approach. There is less loss of detail, but they both approaches work fine. Version 2 of LightRoom's fix works really well most of the time.

Third, you are pretty far away for the stobes to have much of an impact in the photo, and the wider the field the trickier strobe placement becomes. If you increase you F stop the water will darken and you will have fewer spots. The down side is you lose blue in the water. Like the previous post says, get closer and reduce the water column between you and your subject. Wide angle shots from a distance are tough to make work when there are particulates in the water.

Have fun!

Dan

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

In PS there are probably lots of ways to lessen particles, but I am not a big fan of eliminating them completely. The clone stamp is how I eliminate imperfections, but for excessive backscatter I like the magic wand / dust and scratches method. With the tolerance set to 20 and both boxes unchecked I use the magic wand a few times on a backscatter (or a couple) until I have most of it selected. Then the dust and scratch filter with both settings at 3. Then probably the outside ring of the backscatter in the same manner. Then a few other different colored backscatters the same way. I find this much faster than cloning every individual backscatter.

Here is an example photo series. This is a crop of the original wide angle shot. This diver is the last to enter of 2 groups of ~7 divers, so the truth is there are particles in the water. Eliminating it all would result in an unreal image. I only worked with the backscatter around arm and above heel. The final result has less obvious backscatter and I didn't spend hours with the clone tool.

processed for color and light only

after the magic wand / dust and scratches

work area before magic wand / dust and scratches

work area after magic wand / dust and scratches​

Because some of the detail highlights are the same color as the backscatters I worked with, there is a slight lessening of the wall sharpness, but if you never saw the first photo the final result shows the subject diver nicely, with limited backscatter.

 

[texasaubiefan]

Martin - there's an outstanding book called Adobe Photoshop for Underwater Photographers written by Jack and Sue Drafahl. It has the best tips and techniques to correct for most of the issues you face underwater. It's very specific to Photoshop, but to the degree that Lightroom or Elements has those features, you can use them.

 

[simonmittag]

@martinnorway78: I agree with the previous comments I can't see a backscatter problem with your image. You are however too far away from the subject which blurs the subject in blue water already.

As for removing backscatter. I used to use layer masks or selections to remove backscatter but I found painting the masks hard and time consuming, also having occasional edging problems with the masks. I now use the following:

1) duplicate layer

2) Use Noise/Median Filter to blur about 25%

3) Use a history brush to get sharpness back where I want, no painting of masks required.

Cheers,

Simon

 

[Danette]

3) Use a history brush to get sharpness back where I want, no painting of masks required.

Cheers,

Simon

Hi Simon - can you please tell me where to find the "history brush"? I am using Photoshop 6.

Thanks for your help!

Danette

 

[diversteve]

Hi Simon - can you please tell me where to find the "history brush"? I am using Photoshop 6.
Danette

The history brush was only available in Photoshop 7.0 and later.