Fixing dirt marks on background paper

[laszloadrian]

Hello,

I would like to improve the photo bellow. Sincerely I don't know where to start but most disturbing for me are the wheel marks on my white paper. You can see that I tried to minimize the marks by covering them with pieces of paper but under the cart you can still see them

How should I tackle this problem so that the final result does not look "photoshopped"
I only have PS 7 and my knowledge is limited. (for me Picassa was enough until now)

I tried the healing brush, clone stamp but results sucks..at least in my hands
There are so many tutorials out there but I don't know which does apply to my specific need...nobody has to remove wheel marks.

Any idea,link,tutorial,critique,suggestion or link will be appreciated

Thank you
Laszlo

[laszloadrian]

here is the detail with the wheel marks

[bcummings88]

I messed around with it, not sure if mine came out any better than you could do. I just selected the shadowed area with lasso tool and used a gaussian blur for the selected area.

[OsmosisStudios]

Clone tool should do the trick rather nicely.

[Trader]

I just used the airbrush to remove all the streaks.

[laszloadrian]

Thank you all. I will try to see if works on the full size picture.
I tried clone but I don't like the results

Thanks
Laszlo

[flavio]

In this case you just zoom in a lot and use a combination of your two best friends: Clone tool and Heal tool.
Patience and perceverance pay off very well.
Once you get a good grip of these tools you will have so much fun!

Good luck!

[laszloadrian]

Flavio, that was what I was doing and my final looks like sand storm under the cabinet.
I need some luck there.
Thanks
Laszlo

[sarahgirl777]

Originally Posted by laszloadrian

Flavio, that was what I was doing and my final looks like sand storm under the cabinet.
I need some luck there.
Thanks
Laszlo

I don't know what elements will do, but if you use the clone tool at normal and 100% opacity it will look splotchy. I would recommend using it on the Lighten setting and like 20-30% opacity and you can just slowly copy and paste a similar color area over. This will only lighten the track marks but not the shadow part around it which can give those blotches. And at 20-30% opacity it only does it a little at a time so you wont over do it.

[sandraodarp]

That is actually great advice. Another thing that can improve results using the clone tool is to keep resampling, specially on a shadow that has tons of different hues of gray.

So, my advice is: zoom in really really close; use the low opacity and a soft brush and resample constantly trying to follow the changes in hue on the shadow of the cart.

Hope it helps.... please let me know how it works out.