Restoring scan

[Filmandfile]

Does anyone know a good way of photoshopping the drying marks out of this scan? I’ve posted the image and one with de haze ramped up to show the extent of the marks. Thanks

 

[_T_]

It could end up being quite a lot of work. You could try frequency separation to separate the smaller details of the area from the large blotches you want to remove and try all the tools available on those blotches once separate. It might not work or it might not make the job any easier but I would try it first myself.

 

[Romanko]

It might be easier to digitize your slide/negative with a digital camera, wet-mounting if necessary. If the marks are on the substrate side of the film you can try removing them.

 

[Pieter12]

Or you could remove (mask out) the sky and replace it with a cleaner one.

 

[koraks]

the drying marks

They don't look like drying marks to me...

Anyway, you could try the following:
* make a new layer as a copy from the image
* desaturate the layer to make it monochrome
* invert the layer so it becomes negative
* then set the layer mode to 'overlay'
* dial back the layer's opacity until the sky evens out

This is what did with your left-side image:

The crude transitions in the sky are because of the dramatic tonal expansion that was done initially to make the emphasized example and then further exacerbated by the insufficient 8-bit color depth; if you're working in 16-bit space (as you really should be), this shouldn't be a problem.

With the actual image, you'll have to experiment a bit and maybe work with an additional adjustment layer to emphasize the effect, so you can more easily see what you're doing. Here's a crude attempt without doing that and just eyeballing the outcome:

Note that in these examples I didn't mask out the cliffs or the sea, which 'for real' I would do since those areas are not noticeably affected, so I'd rather not touch them. I also didn't apply a curve adjustment to the image to bring the contrast back where it was originally; the overlay method essentially compresses the whole thing and you have to reconstruct the tonality a little after that's been done. Including these two steps in a quick & dirty fashion results in this:

However, a few caveats:
* the problem is fairly subtle to begin with. Maybe just adjust the curves to flatten the sky even further a little bit, and just live with it. If you intend to print these, make proofs and see if the problem is emphasized; if not, try to ignore it...
* It's a complex problem in terms of geometry and the way it forms an integral part of the image. I don't think it really can be fixed entirely.
* as said, these are not drying marks, but rather signs of foaming which tend to correlate to process control issues. Troubleshoot your color development process, as that's where the cause lies.

 

[Filmandfile]

Thanks for all the responses, very helpful, I did use less developer for processing this roll by hand, as I had had some uneven development fora roll or two before and thought maybe a little more room in the tank might help, maybe went to far. Also maybe went a bit vigorous on the agitation , as I did think it was strange when there was some foaming at the development stage.

 

[koraks]

Foaming is in principle normal with C41 developer, but insufficient developer volume can indeed result in this kind of problems. Also taking too long to pour in our pour out the developer can have something to do with this. If you're not using a pre-wet, you could try adding one as sometimes this can also help.