Update
afre_cleanphoto is much harder to code than I had bargained for. Hope the time and effort is worth it. After a couple of weeks of hair loss, I have finally tamed my local processing strategy. The command should be able to parse any regional mask list without fail and suppress any bad input.
Now that I have gotten that out of the way, inpainting is next. Currently, two methods are available to test. I see inpainting as a 3 step process: detecting the blemishes, masking them accurately and filling in the gaps convincingly. Each step is difficult in its own right and subject to state of the art research (by people who are smarter than I and do it for a living). Add in local processing: it is quite the mythical dragon!
1 afre_cleanphoto uses the method I originally committed and shared. It seems to detect and mask consistently, at least for test image 502.jpeg, but is rather plain when it comes to the inpainting.
2 afre_cleanphoto1 is weaker in detection and masking but better in inpainting. Not the most convincing of the set but is available because I happened to use it to develop local processing part of the code.
Small update
1 Books are more substantive than papers. The public library happened to provide access to a book I wanted to read. Learning about median filters and robust stats. Enabled this fun adventure.
2 Noticed that afre_reorder doesn’t work anymore: to fix.