LRTimelapse Forum

Hello Gunther,

I had not been using my camera for more then a year and forgot that I had dust or whatever on my sensor that only showed up on small apertures let's say around f13 and smaller. (cleaned it since then) And since I took the camera out again and started shooting HDR pictures most of my scenes were done with f5.6 or there about. So I had not noticed anything wrong on my images. But a few days ago, I captured a Time Lapse scene that I want to use in one of my projects and I almost fainted....16245 files that will result in 5415 Merged HDR images. They all have spots in them (see file attached) and I thought initially oh well, merge them and once you have the final HDR images fix it with LR4, but the problem is that as time advances in the scenes the cloned spots change colors because of the tone changes in time so the final result is the more we advance the more the spots tend to come back even if they are not as strong.

I was wondering if there was some type of workflow you could suggest that would help me use LRTimelapse to kind of assist LR4 in making the transition....sort of applying your Holy Grail method or something similar. Oh and one detail, the images are original shots bracketed were jpg and so are the final HDR merged ones, in case this makes a difference.

Hi, I assume you have tried to stamp the spots with the clone (use the repair method) and sync this setting to all images?

I would think this should work - if not, I don't see a big chance of rescuing. You won't be able to keyframe this adjustments since this wouldn't make sense at all.

I always recommend shooting time lapse wide open - this gets rid of flicker as well - so normally this shouldn't occur...

In your HDR Workflow I would recommend stacking the images first and then make the stamping in the final stacked sequence.

Hi Gunther,

I tried copy/paste all settings, Sync all settings and both methods yield the same results, meaning on some images the spots are gone and on some others they are emphasized. I am not aware of a method called the repair method, perhaps you could explain?

The workflow I use for HDR when doing Time Lapse is using Photomatix Batch processing, otherwise in the past I have prefered using Photoshop to do my HDR photos. The stamping I am doing or spot removal call it what you want is being done in the final HDR image generated by Photomatix.

I was thing that perhaps I should do it on the original files and do the spot removal in each of the bracketed images by puting them in folders grouped by their EV and then in LR4 removing the spots...perhaps!!!! We'll see, for now I noticed after writing my first message that most of the dreadful spots are on top of the image that will be cropped to 16-9 so perhaps I can still make use of them.

Thank you so much for your help and reply. I'll keep making tests and see what gives....

(2012-06-28, 21:22)gwegner Wrote: [ -> ]Hi, I assume you have tried to stamp the spots with the clone (use the repair method) and sync this setting to all images?

I would think this should work - if not, I don't see a big chance of rescuing. You won't be able to keyframe this adjustments since this wouldn't make sense at all.

I always recommend shooting time lapse wide open - this gets rid of flicker as well - so normally this shouldn't occur...

In your HDR Workflow I would recommend stacking the images first and then make the stamping in the final stacked sequence.

There are two methods for stamping in LR: Clone and Heal.
I would suggest you use Heal:

Just set the diameter twice as big as the spot is.

agree with swegner, with heal you have more chances to resolve. But sometimes it dosen't work because the way lightroom works with this tool. I mean, it tries to patch a spot with another place of image near that one with similar colors/brightness etc. But in a sequence lighttoom dosen't evaluate the best part of image to use for every frame, but simply copy the area to use instead. So the first frame appears ok, but going forward in the animation the differences between the spot you want to remove and the part of image you want to use as sostitution will grow.
A best solution could be to set an action in photoshop, using the spot healing brush tool (with content aware option activated). And then batch execute this action to your sequence. The main difference here is that photoshop will recover every frame using the surrounding data of the spot in that frame. So the results could be more stable and fine.
Of course i suggest to try the gwegner method before (because it's more fast), but if you still have problem the photoshop action way could be a help.

Thanks Screamer, I never thought of doing it with PS because I did not know the creating action part. I will have to investigate and learn how to create an action in Photoshop and from what you are saying, that might work. The other method just didn't work. The spots being in the sky were being cloned with blue sky nearby in some shots and with clouds moving into the area being copied on other shots so it was impossible to fix unless I did it manually on over 1000 shots. I kept the sequences for a while and was going to deleted it but perhaps this might work.

Thanks for your input.

(2012-08-07, 13:39)screamer Wrote: [ -> ]agree with swegner, with heal you have more chances to resolve. But sometimes it dosen't work because the way lightroom works with this tool. I mean, it tries to patch a spot with another place of image near that one with similar colors/brightness etc. But in a sequence lighttoom dosen't evaluate the best part of image to use for every frame, but simply copy the area to use instead. So the first frame appears ok, but going forward in the animation the differences between the spot you want to remove and the part of image you want to use as sostitution will grow.
A best solution could be to set an action in photoshop, using the spot healing brush tool (with content aware option activated). And then batch execute this action to your sequence. The main difference here is that photoshop will recover every frame using the surrounding data of the spot in that frame. So the results could be more stable and fine.
Of course i suggest to try the gwegner method before (because it's more fast), but if you still have problem the photoshop action way could be a help.

(2012-08-07, 13:48)JoseAlonsoLeon Wrote: [ -> ]...The spots being in the sky were being cloned with blue sky nearby in some shots and with clouds moving into the area being copied on other shots so it was impossible to fix unless I did it manually on over 1000 shots.

yes exactly what i mean, because lightroom dosen't evaulate the surrounding area for every frame, but only for the first.
About actions in photoshop, it's not so difficult, but if you want i can do it for you, if you send me a frame at full resolution. What version of photoshop you have?