I just came back from a week in Romania & Bulgaria with hundreds of photos that I'm really psyched about, but there's one thing that's KILLING me. There's some sort of particle/speck inside my camera lens, inaccessible, which appeared as a dark dot on all my photos with sky as a background. Most of them seem like they'd be fairly easy to fix with the right software; I just need some sort of tool to blend the spot in with the surrounding color.
A few of them, the spot is over water, which will be more difficult, but still hopefully not impossible.

I've been resistant to buying Photoshop up till now, and even particularly now because I've got a computer that's probably on its last legs, to be replaced next year, and I may switch from PC to a dual core Mac.

Are there any free or cheap PC programs that people can recommend that might be able to help me with this task? There are around 150 photos affected. Right now I just use Picasa, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have this capability.

Thanks!
Chris

 

I dunno about free stuff... but photochop has the Heal tool which is for just such a problem... you may be able to get a demo or older version of PS for free... maybe or something...

 

Free Try GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) www.gimp.org

 

Thanks, that looks like just the kind of thing I'm looking for! I'll download it and try it out tonight. Friends and family are clamoring for my photos, so I'm really hoping to find something to use quickly.

Tuls - I'm aware that there are various versions of PS that can be acquired online my methods of varying legitimacy, shall we say... but looking for free older/demo versions is a good idea; I'll explore that, too.

 

Chris,
You need a rubber stamp tool. Tutorial on how to use it can be found here. Takes < 1 minute to fix the issue you've described.

Photoshop elements is MUCH cheaper than the full version, yet it has most of the features of the full version. It's cheaper than you expect.

For the money, GIMP is certainly worth trying out. I used it many years ago and was impressed.

 

yeah, get a mac when you get your new computer. i have had macs all my life and nothing compares, especially the new ones.

 

OK, so I did download the GIMP last night, and I'm sure I'll eventually get around to using it, but since it wasn't immediately user-friendly, I started editing my photos by copying and dragging little squares in MS Paint. The ones with uniform sky color come out perfect, and I'm even getting pretty good at clouds and edges of roofs. What I haven't done yet is tried to then manipulate the photos in any way, for color, contrast etc. I'm hoping that the edits won't become more obvious at that point.

Knowing myself, I'll probably do it this way for a while.

 

switch to a mac you wont be dissapointed trust me. I loaded photoshop cs from limewire and have had no problems with it at all.

 

Wow, you are a glutton for punishment, eh? I'd run 10 miles to not have to use ms paint.

Try using the "clone tool" in GIMP. Tutorial. Tip, use a soft edged brush that's about the same size of the defect to be removed (cloned out).

(Apple fanboys, settle down and offer suggestions to the OP questions instead.)

 

Nooooo.....don't use MS Paint for any photo editing.
not only is it archaic, but the compression on jpeg files really degrades the quality of your photos.

I hope you saved/backed up the originals and edited the copies.

Anyway, what camera do you have?
first off it sounds as if you have dust on your sensor. (dark spot on every photo) I would clean that up first. You can find cleaning kits on BHphoto.com

If you have a DSLR, you should have recieved photo editing software with it.
Check, I know Canon includes DPP (digital photo pro).

good luck, post up some of your shots.