Ugh... Powerlines!

Processing
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Hi everyone,

How do you guys deal with obtrusive powerlines through the middle of a landscape?

I’ve tired using both clone and heal tool in GIMP, but becomes pretty obvious something was there.

I’m sure there must be an effective way of dealing with this all to common problem.

Thanks in advance.

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I use a combination of Gmic and GIMP tools for such things.
I start with Gmic’s Impaint (patch based) filter and then I rework the result with Gimp’s clone and heal tool. For the Gmic filter it is important to mask the powerlines as precise as possible.

I removed the wire here as described: First RAW submission, have some fun with it. - #3 by Popanz

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Awesome. Thanks @Popanz!

I downloaded the standalone G’mic because it appears the gimp version isn’t yet compatible with GIMP v2.99, which I pretty much use exclusively these days.

The filter had a tutorial page to go to, it mentioned creating a duplicate image however I couldn’t see where to create one in the filter.

I’m also at a bit of a loss as how to apply a mask using this filter. Are you able to share any insight please?

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated!

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I use the Gimp plugin. I don’t make a duplicate image. I mask with red ff0000 (different colours are possible) - essentially I paint with red what should be impainted. The brush has to be 100% hard, no soft edges.
Afterwards I apply the filter with the wanted settings. For example:

image
image2560×1440 1010 KB

The steps in detail:

  1. I make a copy of my original layer
  2. take a hard brush and paint everything I want to be impainted with the same colour I will choose in Gmic filter - standard is ff0000.
  3. I start Gmic-filter and use it with my favourite settings. I usually choose a new layer for the results, to see what I have masked before. If the result is too far away from my expectation, I try it with different settings. Anyway most of the time some afterwork is necessary.
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With Heal Selection, no need to new layer, no need to restart all over again if I don’t like one of the zones…
Select what you want to see disappear, press yoour globas shortcut, modify the settings if necessary (for each zone) and you’re done.

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Do you mean the resynthesizer plugin? If so, I prefer the Gmic filter. More control and better results. On top I thought, that this doesn’t work anymore on newer Gimp versions.

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if there are powerlines in that place … why edit them out? you are taking a photo of something that exists and not some dream landscape?

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Retouch brush_01
Retouch brush_01504×1080 307 KB

It depends on the actual image which tools will work. If the powerlines are just running through the sky the healing tool in GIMP or darktable would be the way to go. Clone tool is probably not the best choice in either program.

In the sample I have shown here the healing tool in darktable gets rid of the very distracting powerlines. Gimps healing tool would have done a perfect fix as well. It gets very tricky when the powerlines are passing through details of the landscape.

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Hi,
If power lines are in relatively simple texture like sky, following technique is effective.

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That’s a very good point. I most of the time do it this way. But to be honest, sometimes you simply have to remove them… :innocent:

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I’m usually with @darix on this. However…

DSZ_2012
DSZ_2012800×533 197 KB

Look at that scrawny, kinky wire in the top-left. Not even a proper power wire, looks like something you’d pull out of the bathtub drain. So, export a full-resolution TIFF from rawproc, load into GIMP to clone-heal, export back to a full-rez tiff, then back into rawproc for the proof-sized JPEG:

DSZ_2012-gimp
DSZ_2012-gimp800×533 177 KB

I feel much better, now… :crazy_face:

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Looks perfectly period accurate to me! :smile:

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