Fixing Bubbles in the Foreground

[morgan lee]

Last weekend I photographed Mermaids in a performance at a classic Florida

tourist attraction called Weeki Wachee. I love the composition of this shot

with the bubble halo and the performers expression but, especially after adding

a little more light and sharpness, I would really like to tone down or get rid

of the bright-white with bright blue highlight bubble directly in front of her

chin and the bright blue (noise) above the bubbles directly to her right

(viewer's left).

I have been having a devil of a time with the clone brush since the bubble is

right on the shadows of her jaw line.

I'm using Corel Paint Shop Pro XI which should be comparable to Adobe PhotoShop

with a lot of the basics (Clone Brush, Layers etc.)

Any advice on how to fix the burned-out bubbles is greatly appreciated.<div></div>

[steve_parrott]

If you can post a large, hi res shot, I'm sure there are plenty of folks here that would love

to try their hand at fixing it for you!

 

It actually does not look to be too difficult an edit to me.

[morgan lee]

Awesome! This is a 10.1 MP version converted straight from the RAW file to JPEG. Thank you to who ever can take the time to educate me on this.

~Morgan<div></div>

[petemillis]

fix attempt<div></div>

[petemillis]

full size version....<div></div>

[morgan lee]

Wow, Pete! That was quick!

How, exactly, did you DO that?

By the way, I always like to take a look at people's portfolios and I love yours. Looking at a lot of Photo.net's photograph of the week-type shots, though many are beautiful, I get Photoshopped out pretty quickly. I really like the authenticity of your photographs and the young and hungry look of your work. You have a great eye for composition and visual flow.

Happy shooting in the future. I'll be watching your work from now on.

[petemillis]

Morgan, thanks very much for the compliment - it's put another smile on my face after being hacked off all week with my writer's block problem with my PhD revisions!

 

The fix was reasonably straightforward, and there are others who I'm sure could do it better. All I did was use the clone tool, set as small brush, in Canon DPP. I started off by "Select Copy Source" (that's the bit that I want to use to clone out the bubble) just to the right hand side of the bubble on the chin. I didn't fix the "copy" location. Then I dragged fro right to left over the bubble and just followed around in the curve of the chin. Then I switched to the left hand side of the bubble, did "Select Copy Source" and dragge back the other way from left to right following the curve of the chin. This simply got rid of the bubble and blended both sides in.

 

I did similar for the blue noise on the other bubble - just used the brush with "Select Copy Source" as a point on one side, and then the other - blending to meet in the middle. By NOT fixing the source location you get a nice smooth transition.

 

I'm not sure if I managed to explain this very well or not. If not, let me know and I'll do some screenshots for you tomorow. It would be much easier if you were here so I could show you properly.

 

Thanks again Morgan! You've made my day by letting me know what you think of my efforts at photography.

[morgan lee]

Ah, O. K. I think I've got it. I was on the right track. Just being way too heavy-handed and gouging big blue and blurry trails in the photo. Thank you again and good luck with your PHD thingie and all your artistic pursuits.

 

~Morgan

[morgan lee]

Thank you Steve for giving me a shove in the right direction with Photo.Net etiquette on how to post to get help on this forum. Thank you to Pete for giving me a shove in the right direction on the clone brush.

Now to deal with that bubble right beneath the nose...<div></div>