Photo editing - blotches on digital photo

bluenitsuj

Please help, Amateur photographer needs your help. I have taken some of my best landscape pictures while on holiday recently in Taiwan, but when vieing them back, I have noticed a couple of blotches on the photos, is it possible to get rid of these, I have no real experience on using Photoshop ets, what is the best software at not too great a cost so I can remove blotches without ruining effect of photos.

kwikbreaks

Without having seen the photos it is difficult to suggest any cure - why not post one up on one of the many image hosting sites.

That said "blotches" sounds like definition has been lost over areas of the image for some reason (possibly a camera fault). Although they seem able to produce a crisp image showing the villains tattoo and car numberplate from a blurry mess in films in this universe things are rather different. You may be able to retouch the pictures in a number of ways using an image editor to make them more acceptable but it will require considerable skill.

System

For what it's worth, and also from an amateur. If you were to download the free picasa 3, there are facilities there to remove blotches. Strangley enough, although I've been messing around with photoediting suites for years, i'm still learning. Basically all pics are saved in "my pictures",where you can do all manner of things with the photo's and editing suites are ways of displaying them (and also change things). But the changes you make via Picasa and indeed any of the others, are only on those suites, the originals remain untouched on "my pictures".

I recently spent ages cropping pics on Picasa only to find they were still in their original state on "my pictures".

totalsolutions

Blotches = colour hue = easy to fix

Landscape area missing duplicate grass/trees from another area = easy

isofa

Depends what the blotches are, I suspect they are lens flare objects.

Cloning and Healing Brush in Photoshop would be best - nothing can beat Photoshop.

Or use it free online at: www.photoshop.com

Or for free desktop software with similar features try paint.net

bluenitsuj

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Without having seen the photos it is difficult to suggest any cure - why not post one up on one of the many image hosting sites.

That said "blotches" sounds like definition has been lost over areas of the image for some reason (possibly a camera fault). Although they seem able to produce a crisp image showing the villains tattoo and car numberplate from a blurry mess in films in this universe things are rather different. You may be able to retouch the pictures in a number of ways using an image editor to make them more acceptable but it will require considerable skill.

I think the blotches are areas of dirt, pictures before and after are fine. I have cleaned the camera and now looks fine so hopefully not definition problem.

kwikbreaks

bluenitsuj wrote: »

I think the blotches are areas of dirt, pictures before and after are fine. I have cleaned the camera and now looks fine so hopefully not definition problem.

If the areas are small it shouln't be too hard to touch them up using image editing software but you'll need to practice a bit to get really good results. You will never recover what should have been there originally but using a "clone" tool similar content from elsewhere on the image can be put over the blotched bit and blended into the surrounding area.

Strider590

If it's dust on the lense or sensor, you can take a "reference" photo of a perfectly blank background and use that to cancel out the dust spots. Really you should have done this at the time, because if the dust has moved around, it won't work.

foxxymynx

usually

though you need to find out what caused the blotches.

What kind of camera are yyou using? A point and shoot, a bridge or a DSLR?

bluenitsuj

foxxymynx wrote: »

usually

though you need to find out what caused the blotches.

What kind of camera are yyou using? A point and shoot, a bridge or a DSLR?

Canon 400d camera. I beleive the blotches were caused by dirt as they are not there now, I was taking picture with 55mm lens which were okay but had the problem with the 300mm lens, I presume dirt got in when I changed lens.

kwikbreaks

I have a 400D and it has an automatic sensor clean routine so any dust it picked up is probably now cleared.

I've never done it but I'm fairly sure there is a procedure described in the manual (as mentioned above) for noting the positions of stubborn dust particles so that the cameras processing routines can try to compensate. Too late to help now though.

If it is dust on the sensor then it may be that the automatic scratch removal routines which some image editors have could sort out the problem.