How to smooth blemishes in a sky?

boccers_2000

boccers_2000

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Andrew
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Hi Guys, I recently posted a picture on Flick (copy attached) but there are a few things that are annoying me about it.

I took the pic using a 10 stop filter, it had some dirt on it which caused blemishes, most notably in the sky.

I have Elements 9. I tried to clone them out (with low opacity) and by using the healing brush too.

Ultimately because of my lack of knowing how to get them out best I think the result is a little rubbish (ie you can see where i tried to get rid of them plus there is this light ring on the horizon).

Taking into account I use Elements 9 can anyone gove any advise about how to get ris of the blemishes (ie resulting in a seamless sky). Please take account of my lack of post processing knowledge.

Thanks for all your help, much apreciated.


Morning in East Lothian by boccers, on Flickr
 
that's a great shot btw!

as far as the light ring goes, i think that looks quite effective left in the shot.

for the blemishes i would choose an area just above each blemish and clone in the direction of the 'grain' in the sky. bit difficult to explain, but rather than just clone individual blobs to get rid of the blemishes i would kind of paint using the clone brush in the direction of the grain - if you get what i mean :thumbs:
 
I have no idea which tools are in Elements 9 but if there is a Patch tool, it might be useful here.

Low opacity cloning removes "texture" which is usually something you want to retain.

Nice shot btw, lovely colours :)
 
PSE 9 has Content Aware Fill. I'd try that in combination with a soft brush + masked duplicate layer so's you can do it all again when it goes wrong. I can usually do that sort of thing in under ten goes these days! :)
 
That image seems quite noisy, what ISO did you shoot this on?
I really want a 10 stop ND filter too, I love the milky sea shots it produces!
 
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