Eric,
Returning from a trip to a canyon in southern Utah my friend informed me
that all of his digital pictures were marred by a fingerprint smudge on
the lens that created a dull haze to a good 75% of all images right in
the center. I took copies of the images to see if I could use GIMP to
improve them. Out of the recesses of my spotty memory I recalled
reading something on the web about removing haze. I connected the dots
and realized atmospheric haze was very similar to the fingerprint haze
in these photos. I only read a few image editing sites, your key among
them, so I found your article right away. With a bit of trial and error
I found some good settings for unsharp mask that dramatically improved
the quality of the images. Seriously amazing.
On a few images I even applied the unsharp mask to the entire image then
selected the oblong fingerprint smudge area, highly feathered the edges
(150 pixels) then repeated the unsharp mask on this area (sometimes
increasing the amount) to avoid over sharpening the unsmudged corners of
the image.
While the images are still soft, they have been salvaged from almost
useless to descent quality by use of this one technique (OK, I did the
usual color level adjustment too).
A picture is worth a thousand words so I have attached before and after
images.
Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge of image editing,
especially your GIMP tutorials.
- Kris
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