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So, I have 10-12 aluminum water bottles painted in various colors. Some of them are painted in a flat finish while some others have a semi transparent paint which shows the brushed aluminum texture.

The client wants the texture removed and I don't know how to proceed. I'm proficient with the frequency separation editing and I tried it, but it takes an insane amount of time for imperfect finish.

Can anyone help me with a more efficient method? Thanks!

enter image description here

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3 Answers 3

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I couldn't decide whether you need to remove the turning marks where the bottles have been lathed, or just the light brush marks from the polishing stage, so all the examples below kind of aim 'half way'.

A few ideas:-
All these require Select & Mask at the start, to keep the edges sharp.

Photoshop's Median filter will average out the texture, but it's a bit coarse…

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Frequency separation with a mask, vary the opacity of the Hi Freq layer to balance…
I have this as an action, but with a variable Gaussian Blur, so a couple of tests & you could almost production line it, typing in the same numbers or set up a 'fixed' action.

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Texture & Clarity, again with a mask…

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Texture, Clarity & Dehaze can all play with your colours a bit [or really exposure curves], so be careful.

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  • The client is mostly concerned about the signs from polishing! thanks for your efforts, I tried frequency separation and the same texture& clarity trick but I feel like there could be a better solution due to the repeating pattern which I can't really grasp. Of course frequency separation could work great with some serious time spent perfecting it, maybe in more than one step, which is probably what I will end up doing!
    – user2142254
    Apr 30, 2021 at 18:17
  • If by 'repeating pattern' you mean the larger horizontal stripes, those are the turning marks produced by the lathe. By the time you knock those out you've no texture left [& a solid case for mis-representation in your advertising]. thb, I'd avoid even cleaning up the light brush marks, as they'll be the first thing the customer notices when it's in their hand. That's what those bottles look like unless they're using a finer extrusion method, like on a coke can. Hiding it is dodgy territory for advertising.
    – Tetsujin
    May 1, 2021 at 8:19
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Photoshop's surface blur filter is designed specifically for this task. I found a radius of 10 and threshold of 15 worked well for this image; and it retained the edges/definition well without any masking or additional steps/edits.

enter image description here

But, if these are marketing/sales images, I would be concerned about editing the images to eliminate a characteristic that is prominent in the product... a bit of false advertising/misleading maybe.

Edit: A trick you can use with Surface Blur is to use lower radius/threshold settings and apply the filter numerous times. That will cause even more small detail loss/blur while also retaining more contrast. This is w/ settings of 5/10 applied about 8 times (keyboard shortcut).

enter image description here

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  • While I tried all other suggestions I received so far, I've never used Surface Blur so I'm excited to learn a new tool, will play around with it! I also fully agree on the misleading advertising side, which I also voiced to the client as the first thing. Especially since I am talking to the ecommerce staff which needs to handle returns and complaints! That's why I'm pushing to keep originals, besides the extra work I have to do :)
    – user2142254
    Apr 30, 2021 at 18:28
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    I like the multi-blur version [which I guess was just several Cmd/Ctrl/F repeats?] but I can almost feel the returns from customers, expecting a ming vase & getting a scratchy bottle ;))
    – Tetsujin
    May 1, 2021 at 17:48
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    @Tetsujin; LOL! yes Cmnd/Cntrl/F repeats; quick and easy... and misleading...
    – Steven Kersting
    May 1, 2021 at 21:43
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One possible way is to use Lightroom ( the same in ACR) with

texture=-56
clarity=-38
dehaze=-20

Here is the result enter image description here

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    At a quick glance, this looks ok. But at the size you posted it, it looks very soft, almost like it had a "soft filter" or hazy "panty hose"-like filter applied to it.
    – scottbb ♦
    Apr 29, 2021 at 23:14
  • @scottbb, correct, it is soft, combined effect of clarity and dehaze
    – Romeo Ninov
    Apr 30, 2021 at 4:06
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    Thanks for your suggestion!
    – user2142254
    Apr 30, 2021 at 18:16

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