Waterfall retouching?

[Some Guy]

Had some waterfalls I shot at:  ISO 100.  1/6 second at f/11 along with 600 watt/second flash for fill on a subject near them.

Printed it.

Some of the falls have what look to be black pepper sprinkled on the print.  Maybe 1/6 sec. wasn't slow enough for the blur?

I have PS CS6 and how does one attack or eliminate the pepper look?  I was thinking the Blur tool, lighten, and luminosity?  Or Smudge tool maybe?  Mask the falls and apply?

Thanks.

SG

[KMRennie]

Is it possible to post a shot?
Ken

[Some Guy]

Is it possible to post a shot?
Ken

Ken, here is a tight crop of the falls.  People are out of the shot.

You can see the odd shapes in the water, some look like white worms.  Might partially be due to the fill-flash for the people running too even though the shutter was 1/6 second for the water itself.  Don't know if even 1 second would be slow enough with the flash which might still cause the artifacts.  It has a very pepper looking effect in the water.

Any ideas how to smooth it out?  A way to mask and maybe blur the falls alone?  People are tack sharp as are the rocks, just the water is messed up bad in the prints.

Thanks.

SG

[Sheldon N]

The short flash duration illuminated and froze the water motion in the waterfall. That will happen regardless of your shutter speed, because the flash is a very fast burst.

No real way to fix it, short of a lot of photoshop.

[Dave Pluimer]

If you're using Lightroom, try an adjustment brush with Clarity set to -50 (as a starting point). It won't get rid of it, but I think it will reduce the emphasis and smooth it out some.

[petermfiore]

You may also try Dust and Scratches in PS and play with the settings...

Peter

[Some Guy]

Thanks all.

What I learned was, "Do not use flash with waterfalls!"  EVER!!!

I found an idea to use "Motion Blur" in Photoshop after putting the falls in a mask.  Problem with these falls is that there are three different angles of the water so setting up a blend is tough.  Blurring the edge to match the surrounding area is tough too.

Shooting people around the falls with fill flash is tougher than I thought it would be.  Maybe a large reflector board would be the better idea, or try and aim a beam off a strong LED flashlight to fill shadows on the them since the shutter speed is already slow enough, but that would be harsh.

I need to explore better options for soft light for people in harsh sun with rapidly moving water.  People like the area and subsequent photos look nice, but "White water worms" from the flash is a mess.  Gets worse looking with the larger enlargements too.

SG

[TonyW]

The biggest problem here is to isolate the problem spots only without affecting the rest of the image as an overall filter would.

One way that may work for you in PS is to create a mask using the Find Edges filter and after manipulating contrast apply the Median filter through the mask to repair/disguise the unwanted elements.  I wont go into too much detail at this time but if you want to try and are stuck I will try and talk you through it

This is a quick play using the method in two distinct areas to attempt repair.  There still remains a small amount of work to do manually Wait a few seconds for the image to change


This shows the two seperate masks used

[Some Guy]

Interesting use of the mask.  Thanks for the idea.

I played a bit more with masking the falls area (masking blur), but there are sharp areas such as rocks, ferns, as well as the moving falls around them all.  Image above was just small portion of the entire area since people were also in the frame.  Some of the falls were falling off some long ferns too.  Tougher area than I thought it would be.  To try and fix a lot of photos would be a lot of work.

Best is to not use electronic flash near them, and try and use maybe a tungsten fill of some sort.  Would have to be a lot of lumens, maybe 12,000 or so.  Getting a reflector in there would be hit of miss since the leaves in the forest canopy were dense and just spots of sunlight in areas.

There are some slow-burn flashbulbs made in Ireland that burn for 2 seconds that could work too, just they cost $65 per flashbulb.  Some absurd guide number of 5000 at ISO 100 and 1/6 second off them too.  Evidently they use them in those high-speed auto crash photos into barriers for safety testing of impact damages where they need a couple of seconds with some high-speed cameras running.

SG