The ultimate clone and heal exercise...

[coffee]

Here is an image I took a few moths ago. It's a sad story really in that the dragonfly was dying, and wasn't moving much. I took this as a photo op. At the beginning he was pretty clean. But after he fell a few times he picked up a lot of dirt. I didn't want to bin the image because I like it. So I've been chipping away at fixing it up. I got as far as one eye (almost) and a little of his nose. I have over an hour in it already I think. If you what a good challenge, and great clone and heal practice take this one on and remove all the dust from him. The hard part of the eye is removing all the dust, while keeping all the tiny eye spots lined up. Otherwise the eye will look funny. Even a few out of place seems to draw your eye to it.

Those that take the challenge are free to start off my edited image, but please state if you worked off my edit, or started from the original.

[mj702002]

Oh My...It is beyond me!! You did an excellent job on what you have done to it so far!

[StephenK]

Hi Joseph :)

I was looking at the details of your image and noticed that the dots of dust were only a pixel or two wide
so I decided to try something that I had run across some time ago and see if it would work with this image.

I first chose your edited image since you did such a good job on that already and there didn't seem the need
to reinvent the wheel. :^)

I then made two copies of the background image in photoshop and set the top one to the Darken blending mode
and left the bottom one as Normal.

Then selecting the lower copy I held down the control key and pressed the right arrow key twice, moving the bottom
image over by two pixels. Right away this made a big difference in how much dust was now visible.

Then selecting the upper background image, I set a mask, and then filled-in with black the areas that were mostly
dust free in order to bring out the already sharp details in the layer below. Then I pecked a bit going after some of the remaining
dust (since the layer just below it essentially dust free just two pixels over)

And lastly added a blank layer and used the clone tool to cover over a few of the bigger offenders.

The image is still not dust free.... but it was a quick way of getting rid of some of the worst of the worst. :^)

[coffee]

Very interesting Stephen, what a great idea. Did you come up with that idea. I noticed that this worked better on the mouth area of the dragonfly than the right eye, but what a great way to save time on that section. Thanks for sharing this :)

[StephenK]

Hi Joseph :^)

I saw something about shifting layers like this in a tutorial some time ago. It was one of those things that I tucked away at
the time... and when I saw your image it rushed back to me. I don't even remember if they applied it in this way, but for some
reason this technique was just begging to be used...

As it stands right now the image clearly wouldn't be ready for prime time. :^) but for a casual use it filled-in some blanks, leaving
several more hours of work ahead were the image to be heading toward print... Thank you for posting this challenge Joseph.... that was fun...! :^)

[coffee]

I thought I would post a follow up on this thread because I was finally able to finish this image. This image was originally destine for the trash because of all the debris this dragonfly had on him because he was dieing and no longer could clean himself. But the shot had good color and focus and I just couldn't throw it out without trying to save it first. The only parts I purposely didn't clean up was the insects nose, and a little part under the nose. I did clean it up, but it had no depth and looked funny. So I left the dirt in these two areas to give it some dimension.

[StephenK]

Amazingly well done Joseph!! Bravo!! :^)

[coffee]

Amazingly well done Joseph!! Bravo!! :^)

Thank you Stephen. This was by far my most challenging cleanup case.

[StephenK]

Thank you Stephen. This was by far my most challenging cleanup case.

And I am most deeply impressed Joseph! Since I posted my original edit on this I revisited it a couple of times to see if there
was some other quick way of addressing the clean-up process... and other than the intense detailing process that you've clearly
just been through, I could find no other shortcuts! My initial reaction when I first saw this finished edit was that of awe... and this
awe still remains.... A standing ovation is in order...! :^)