First of all : my dearest appreciation for this great piece of software. Ticks all my boxes, including reading RAW files from Sony a7rV… but one.
Many of my pictures are from scuba diving. So I regularly end up (more than I like) with backscatter on my photo’s. (Backscatter is formed by small particles in the water reflecting strobe light and can show up as small white spots or bigger grey - out of focus - spots. And yes, even the world champion strobe positioning, which I’m not, can end up with it on pictures.) Spot removal is my big friend in this matter, but when I have to use it for many spots, it becomes a cumbersome process. Photoshop (also the Express version) has a more user friendly way of doing it : first it proposes a replacement based on the surrounding pixels (in the Express version that’s where it ends) and when not satisfied it can be replaced with something else using the same process as in ART. If the proposed replacement is acceptable, the spot is removed with one click only, which makes a big difference compared to the process required in ART now. Certainly if you have 100 or more spots to remove in one single picture…
Even better would be that with one click all spots would be removed, whether or not combined with a mask option . I.e. if in an area with mostly blue pixels there are some white or grey spots or circles, these could be automatically replaced by similar blue ones. Obviously it should still be possible for the user to not accept some alterations. Not sure how that should work.
Or if anyone has another idea on how to easily remove many spots, I would love to hear it.
Hi,
Can you show an example of the problem? I have zero experience with underwater photography and I’m not sure I understand what you are describing. Thanks!
with backscatter. If you want I can deliver raw files as well, but they are a lot bigger.
The picture of the moray eel has so much backscatter that I don’t even consider cleaning it, even with the Photoshop way of working, but it serves well as an example picture of what backscatter can look like. The picture of the turtle has a lot as well but the particles were further away, hence appearing as small dots rather than circles.
Best regards
Thanks Yasuo for the help. The provided pictures where just examples of what backscatter is. Bakscatter doesn’t only appear in clear blue areas as in the example with the turtle, but with any background like corals, fish, … whatever is on the picture. As stated in your document, the GIMP approach won’t work with more complicated backgrounds.
Thanks for the samples, now I understand. I must be honest and tell you there are near zero chances that I will work on this though, sorry. And I say “near” just because you never know
But the code is there, and contributions are welcome!
Thanks for the honesty and for the creation of ART ! I’ll keep removing the backscatter in different programs then and maybe use Yasuo’s approach when possible.
Kind regards
. I.e. if in an area with mostly blue pixels there are some white or grey spots or circles, these could be automatically replaced by similar blue ones. Obviously it should still be possible for the user to not accept some alterations. Not sure how that should work.
