Beginner Fix Blemish?

Sony Corleone

Sony Corleone

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I like this shot a lot, but I would like to do something about the pimple. I edited it with Photolab, and I am happy with the colors and crop and so on. I have Photoshop and Lightroom on trial, but I am not far along in learning to use them. I also have free Affinity. Any ideas?

IMG_0771 DxO by Cosmo Bogus, on Flickr
 
Use the clone tool, and then the blur tool to smooth the texture.

There will be other ways to do it as well :)

pp.jpg

Edit : I use Affinity
 
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As @Phil V said, or in Affinity use the Inpainting tool or Blemish removal tool.
 
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Yes to the clone and stamp tools, I think a trial versions should have them.
Also agree with this!
Phil V said:
The spot healing tool in Lightroom is specifically designed for that kind of thing.
Literally takes a second
Click to expand...

If you prefer mobile apps, try Snapseed, they have a spot healing tool as well.
For PC there are portrait editors like Photodiva, they have skin smoothing tools too.
 
Thanks
 
I have found Affinity to be a little complicated for this, and when I ask AI for help, it makes wild guesses and gets everything wrong. I decided to check Lightroom. I used the smoothing tool, and then I used the healing brush. The results are very good. I don't think the baby needed skin smoothing, but he got it anyway.

Thanks for the help.

I hate to crop out that beautiful sky, but I may do it.

IMG_0771-Lightroom 700.jpg
 
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The inpainting brush in affinity is a good tool for this - I fills the blemish with texture from surrounding areas - it generally works well.

As you’ve found, generally, these types of edit are better done in your raw developer as it saves the round trip into your editor., personally, I do 99% of my edits in CaptureOne (similar product to lightroom)
 
I am hoping to avoid subscribing to Lightroom or Photoshop just for things like this. I think it will be worth it to go through the torture of learning Affinity.
 
Sony Corleone said:
I am hoping to avoid subscribing to Lightroom or Photoshop just for things like this. I think it will be worth it to go through the torture of learning Affinity.
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What Lightroom and CaptureOne do really well is also serve as a catalog for your images to make them easy to find and tag. Once you get into 1000 of photos it becomes hard and unwieldy to manage them in Affinity or any pixel editor alone.

They also make many edits, including applying a consistent look and style really easy.

Personally what I save in time is worth the outlay
 
Thanks for the info. Right now I am trying out Excire Foto, which seems very good, although when I searched for "elderly man," it brought up photos of me, so that is clearly a serious defect.
 
The summrs system is good for this. I use it for a lot of spot touching up and color fixing. I used to use LR for this, switched off recently as my editor otherwise I'd say them. Also there is darktable, but mighty confusing haha
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Sony Corleone said:
I am hoping to avoid subscribing to Lightroom or Photoshop just for things like this. I think it will be worth it to go through the torture of learning Affinity.
Click to expand...

I haven't heard learning Affinity as torture before :) Most find it quite intuitive, including many who are used to Photoshop, However different people find different methods easier, so maybe Photoshop/Lightroom is the choice for you.

Th Inpainting tool on Affinity will often fix things with a single click, as I wanted to fix the pimple on the front of her chin as well, I used clone, as it is often easier with finer detail or high contrast areas, does take a few seconds longer than a single click, but well under a minute for both.

Have you looked on Youtube for tutorials on Affinity? You will normally find them for a particular task, so they are not too long.

Another free one is Gimp, and another low cost one is ACDSee Gemstone
 
I spent a very long time talking to AI, trying to get the blemish stuff to work, and it was misery. It kept telling me to use nonexistent menus and options. Extremely frustrating.
 
Sony Corleone said:
I spent a very long time talking to AI, trying to get the blemish stuff to work, and it was misery. It kept telling me to use nonexistent menus and options. Extremely frustrating.
Click to expand...

Some of those videos will be for Affinity v2. The new version moved things around - but it’s not hard - you select to inpainting brush from the tools panel and brush over the area. That’s it.
 
AI is artificial intelligence. Like Grok. Extremely helpful with all sorts of questions, but when it's wrong, it's severely and persistently wrong.
 
cuthbert said:
Some of those videos will be for Affinity v2. The new version moved things around - but it’s not hard - you select to inpainting brush from the tools panel and brush over the area. That’s it.
Click to expand...
I have free Affinity.

Getting to that tool has been very hard. I finally found it by ignoring AI, but now I've forgotten how I did it, so I have to start over. I think I found it under a different icon on the left panel. I'll mess with it today. I should write some notes this time.
 
Sony Corleone said:
AI is artificial intelligence. Like Grok. Extremely helpful with all sorts of questions, but when it's wrong, it's severely and persistently wrong.
Click to expand...

I didn't think you would use AI to help, so I thought it must have another meaning!

Best to look at the videos, real intelligence, from real people.

I think your torture comes from AI not Affinity :)
 
AI is a lot faster and better when it works, so I always try it first. It has been a great substitute for forums. People here are very helpful, but as you probably know, many forums are full of gatekeepers and persistent trolls.
 
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