I took this photo the other day from a moving car. I think the window was up too. Is anyone able to make it clearer or is it past fixing. I have had a little play in gimp with it without success.

sallyanne: oh good heavens, what is that thing??!!! is that one of your aussie spider breeds??!!
my guess is there's too little information in the image to make anything much out of it, but i've downloaded it and will give it a try.

Its actually a giant lobster statue in Kingston in the South East of South Australia.
I had a 2 second shot at it again today. missed. Now it is 400 Kilometers away
Thanks for trying to fix it. I tried on 3 different photo/graphic programs and couldn't get anything to work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lobster
There is a clearer picture in this link from the same side but it is not the exact same photo.

Not much to be done about the washed out area of the flash reflection, but I might be able to bring out some more detail on the lobster itself, which I'm assuming, is what you're after.

One trick that can help with reducing the haze in the photo is to use "Filters->Enhance->Unsharp Mask..." with a maximum radius of "500". You might want to reduce the Amount setting to "0.3" or so (and perhaps apply the filter a second time).

Like I said, I'm writing off the washed out flash burned area, but the lobster looks sharper and less hazy. The colors are still a bit wonky I think but the details are more discernable. You might want to crop it or something.



Edit, because I couldn't stop derping with it, I went ahead and darkened the sky some and greeneried the grass. I made it up as I went along. It involved creative use of layer masks etc.

Yes I am ek22. Thanks for the tip saulgoode. Does it matter where the threshhold settings are? I ran it the second time and the clouds in the centre went pink

ek22 Thanks
I didn't refresh before I posted so it looked like we posted at a similar time

Yes sure , it does matter
But if you are satisfied with the sharpening and is only the color shift your problem that is really easy :
instead to work on the original , copy on 2 layer , apply unsharp as you already did

now change the layer mode to Value you will get the same effect but without change of hue

Result may be already good but for some reason usually improve if you now apply to the other duplicate of the original, that below a slight gaussian blur, for slight i intend about 2 ,image size here is not too relevant 2 pt of gaussion blur would merge any ..disturbing sprayed pixel noise... well is not exactly noise but just try , you would be maybe surprise to notice that blurring (slightly) that layer you will not blur the visible , because the sensation of sharpness derive mainly by the greyscale , not by the hue or saturation.

instead that subtle blur may have a very nice effect on the color
Sorry i wrote too much but concept is simple ,in few words

1) duplicate 2 times the original
2) unsharp the dup on top, then change its Layer mode to Value
3) now activate the layer below,
Filter> blur> Gaussian Blur , DO NOT use the default , that is 5pt, LOWER TO 2 or max 3 are usually sufficent
here just check the before/ after :

According to the images to edit step 3 may even be superfluous , but i found always worth try it, are only 2 clicks that may have a surprisingly good effect on colors

Looking at this lobster for a while made me hungry for crab legs...

sallyanne: i can see you've already got lots of good advice and two very good images, but i'm going to post my attempt anyway. the more choice you have, the better, i hope?
lobster sounds infinitely better than those eight-legged terrors i suggested . in fact, after i had got some more detail in the picture i started to think it looked rather nice and friendly!


ek22: you're a real master at this! my attempt looks overdone and amateurish in comparison.

Your image doesn't open for me AnMal.

molly: no, it doesn't for me either. i have no idea what went wrong, but i'll edit my last post and try to upload it again.

Don't really do much photo enhancing or touch ups, thought this might be a good time to have a go.



Could help myself but after a bit more tweaking couldn't resist the urge to run GMIC'S Dream Smoothing.

I always find it amusing that kind of issues.
Sally and her photographic skills give me some good moments from time to time, as in this case viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8701&start=10#p112564

Thanks Sally!!

Wow thank you all for your enhancements. I got to give this more of a try today.
@ ek22 my camera was on automatic, so the flash shouldn't have been on. I am guessing that 'burnt' area in the middle is from sunlight on the window - Cant recall now if I was pointing towards the sun either as it was near the middle of the day.
I took a photo from further inside the car earlier on and was reprimanded by the driver (my daughter) because it flashed then and distracted her.

You charmer you.

@sallyanne: Maybe it was just the clouds or a reflection, either way, that bright area was sort of a loss in my attempts.

Sallyanne if you open your image in GIMP and go to Colors>Levels just by pushing the arrows towards the image information (that would be indicated by swells), you can retrieve much of the information that can be lost in a photograph.

This is with just levels as a mentioned above then a selection with the scissor tool to make the lobster horn that has the wire hanging on it darker by using Colors>Curves.

Original-



Adjusted-

Thought i would add an explanation with an image so you know what i mean.

ah I know where that is I stopped and got a photo of it and we had fun acting like it was chasing us!

good thing the people that live there are kinda laid back and used to that sort of thing.

Thank you Rod. Always wondered what levels was. I am learning heaps here at GC.
@ schroedinger I am glad someone else knows where it is.