How to get rid of hotspots ?

[chriszzz]

Hi,

I'm new to Photoshop ( but not to photography, which I've been doing on and off for several years as a hobby ). The limit of my knowledge of Photoshop is doing levels and USM and other simple stuff. Now that I've set the context, I have a problem.

I have a picture of a nice big cathedral ( taken in Salisbury, England ) taken at night. The problem now is that on the sides of the cathedral are 2 huge spot lights, and these spotlights show up as 2 really big bright hotspots on the photo. I can't find a good crop to get rid of them, and I can't do a clone over them. Any ideas on how else can this hotspots be reduced or better still, removed ?

 

[denn23]

Hi,

I'm new to Photoshop ( but not to photography, which I've been doing on and off for several years as a hobby ). The limit of my knowledge of Photoshop is doing levels and USM and other simple stuff. Now that I've set the context, I have a problem.

I have a picture of a nice big cathedral ( taken in Salisbury, England ) taken at night. The problem now is that on the sides of the cathedral are 2 huge spot lights, and these spotlights show up as 2 really big bright hotspots on the photo. I can't find a good crop to get rid of them, and I can't do a clone over them. Any ideas on how else can this hotspots be reduced or better still, removed ?

i wanna know too.. thanks for asking

 

[Ian]

Hi,

I'm new to Photoshop ( but not to photography, which I've been doing on and off for several years as a hobby ). The limit of my knowledge of Photoshop is doing levels and USM and other simple stuff. Now that I've set the context, I have a problem.

I have a picture of a nice big cathedral ( taken in Salisbury, England ) taken at night. The problem now is that on the sides of the cathedral are 2 huge spot lights, and these spotlights show up as 2 really big bright hotspots on the photo. I can't find a good crop to get rid of them, and I can't do a clone over them. Any ideas on how else can this hotspots be reduced or better still, removed ?

Without seeing the hotspots it's kind of difficult to answer, can you post the photo or provide a link to the shot or a crop of the damaged areas.

Ian

 

[chriszzz]

Without seeing the hotspots it's kind of difficult to answer, can you post the photo or provide a link to the shot or a crop of the damaged areas.

Ian

OK. Here it is :

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=2040897

See the big white ugly hot spot by the 2 sides ( esp the left one ). Very distracting. Is there anyway to lessen it ? It was also rather noisy (due to long exposure), so this image is already run through Neat Image. There's still quite alot of residual noise left , esp in the blue-maroon part of the sky.

Thanks in advance.

 

[togu]

Can't see the picture, this is the message shown on yahoo site,

"The File You Are Looking For Is Inaccessible."


As mentioned by Ian, will need to see the picture to get some clues.

 

[chriszzz]

Can't see the picture, this is the message shown on yahoo site,

"The File You Are Looking For Is Inaccessible."


As mentioned by Ian, will need to see the picture to get some clues.

Oops. OK, it should be available now. Thanks

 

[denn23]

err.. no follow up?

 

[chaotic]

from what i know. it's impossible to save the overexposed spots... you can try darkening it but the details are all already lost. it's better to underexpose than to overpose sometimes because you can sort of save underexposure in ps but overexposure, it's near impossible. but obviously the best method is to have exposure spot-on.

in this case, it's difficult too because the dynamic range of your camera probably couldn't handle the huge differential in light. one way of solving this is to bracket the shots and later combine them in PS. or use film which has better dynamic range

 

[chriszzz]

from what i know. it's impossible to save the overexposed spots... you can try darkening it but the details are all already lost. it's better to underexpose than to overpose sometimes because you can sort of save underexposure in ps but overexposure, it's near impossible. but obviously the best method is to have exposure spot-on.

in this case, it's difficult too because the dynamic range of your camera probably couldn't handle the huge differential in light. one way of solving this is to bracket the shots and later combine them in PS. or use film which has better dynamic range

Thanks for your input, but I'm aware of this. The problem was that it was evening, and I had to use X number of seconds to record details on the church. The spot light will always be a problem since it is waaaay brighter than anything around. I know it's hard to remove it, but how else can I at least reduce it.

 

[denn23]

i wanna know..

waht tools do i use in ps that can get rid of the hotspots..

waht i do is i select an area.. then copy and paste.. which ends up in one rectagular non-matching colour..

thanks.

 

[togu]

Try using the clone tool, healing brush, multiple layers. Select soft brush tip, with a low opacity level for the 2 tools. Not sure how good it'll turn out tho. Pretty tough. :think:

 

[Ian]

Thanks for your input, but I'm aware of this. The problem was that it was evening, and I had to use X number of seconds to record details on the church. The spot light will always be a problem since it is waaaay brighter than anything around. I know it's hard to remove it, but how else can I at least reduce it.

Okay chriszzz those over exposed lights cannot really be removed except by spending hours rebuilding the sides of the shot and even then it won't look 100 percent.

Such lights can be dealt with in two ways, with the simpler method being to use a calibrated 'finger' to block each of light sources for around 60% of the exposure time. It's not as easy as it sounds but it's a lot easier than the other method which involves using a clear filter and adding light blocks to it made up from black cardboard or felt tip pen.

 

[DragcoX]

I tried doing some quick filters here n there, cant really arrive at a very nice effect for the big spotlight glare.

The small one can be reduced using a combo of layers, inverting, lens glare, smoothing etc etc.

But the big glare seems very hard to reduce coz there no background data available. I guess this is where RAW n bracketing really comes in helpful.

i presume u shot in jpg rite? If u have the RAW file, sample some under jpg n combine, it should have a better effect.

Juz my opinion. :angel: