'Edited' Spanish marbled white - Melanargia ines

To get from the original to the final a series of steps needed to be done, using Photoshop. Incidentally I'm not claiming that this is an improvement, it just illustrates a point.

To begin with Photo CD scans lose a little colour and are a shade fuzzy. Using USM and levels in Photoshop adjust this problem, although the auto-levels is much too harsh to use. To remove a couple of unwanted grass stems I selected the affected areas and duplicated colour from elsewhere and then merged it in. The top eyespot is an edited version of one of the bottom wing spots.

To achieve a reasonable effect you have to work with a large image file and methodically work with small areas bit by bit, occasionally checking the overall effect. Photoshop 4 has layers which are excellent for this purpose as you can work with a kind of overlay, not actually affecting the original image but working on a transparency above it, so you can see the effect. It is always possible to then go back and redo a small part if you're not satisfied.

© All pictures in these pages copyright to Simon Coombes. Permission must be sought and obtained for any use.