I took a series of photographs of a beautiful snake the other day. Pics are flawed in many ways - lighting, pose, focus, surroundings, etc, but the one thing that really ruins them for me is a couple of stains on the back of the snake that I should have wiped off before photographing it. How can you remove them? I expect it's fairly straightforward but I'm rather new to gimp and I have no idea where to even begin.

Here's a few of the pics:

This was done in 2 or 3 minutes with the clone tool.

Hi krismunk welcome to this forum.
I saw a snake of about this size yesterday while I was metal detecting. I didn't bother photographing it because it was a deadly tiger snake, one of the world's most venomous. It spoiled my day. If you are trying to remove discoloration from a snake them don't do wild life photography because it will be fake. The world is full of fakes who have built a fake world that is disintegrating.
Play it like it is and show it like it is.

Thanks,

for 2-3 minutes that's pretty impressive. It's visible that the scalation is off but you have to look pretty closely to catch it. I think it will take quite a bit of practice before I'll be able to achieve similar results.

Thanks for the welcome, Tas.

I get where you're coming from and usually I act exactly as you prescribe. When I'm out just by myself I photograph wildlife without touching it and more often than not I don't edit the photos at all, beyond the occasional cropping, which is exactly why, though I've been doing this for years, I still don't know how to manipulate a picture. I will occasionally adjust the lighting a bit if it seems too off but more often than not I'll leave it as is even if I'm dissatisfied, because my efforts end up making the picture look not good, but just obviously fake.

This, however, was one of those rare cases where I was in the field with others who share my passion for these critters. As such, since they were some distance away, I felt obliged to catch the snake, a Seoane's viper, for them to see. Such is the code. To not risk it getting away, I didn't take as much time, or go as close, photographing it in situ as I normally would and therefore tried to get some posed shots (which, out of a general lack of practice and interest I suck at taking). Prior to my capture the snake was clean and the stain is musk that it emitted as a response to capture. I would like to show the snake in all its natural splendor. Unfortunately these pictures are already compromised by the unnatural situation and, did I not feel obligated to my friends, I would have preferred to get the best in situ shots I possibly could leaving the snake untouched. I think in this case it is a fair question to raise whether the act of editing away such a stain under these circumstances should be considered faking it further or just doing your best to represent the snake at its best. While nothing about these photographs is ideal I lean towards the latter but I completely respect your opinion.

btw...

here are a couple of pictures of it as it was before reacting to my presence. In spite of obvious technical flaws I am particularly fond of the first of these which is also the one I have posted in a facebook group for people sharing my interest despite knowing full well that a close up would garner a lot more positive responses and acknowledgement but I would like, in addition to these, to also have pictures that are at least a bit more crisp than the second and show more details than either of them.

Thanks for replying krismonk. I can find where you are by the type of snake You really shouldn't handle it but you did. Maybe use a zoom lens more?

I'm on old guy, years ago I had a friend killed by a snake while he was watering his dope plants in the bush. The bush is actually jungle in that area. He died in a helicopter because for some reason they bring the snake bite victim to the antivenom, not the other way around.

Here in Tasmania they are just waking-up from their winter sleep (the snakes that is Usually you see them metal detecting but often its too thick to see the ground. I wear snake gaitors but they can strike higher up.

Plenty of places I'd wear gaiters as well. Sorry to hear about your friend.

...and believe me. I don't just grab them bare handed.

Good points raised about fakes, I would leave it as is too.

However if you want to edit and keep the scalation I don't see you could do that accurately with the clone tool.

I gave it a simple try by just changing the colour of the stains but you can see the edit:

This is how I will do


Because the dirty place is in the curve, I copy /paste another part of the snake with a similar curves (layers/transform/horizontal), then a mask on it (Ctrl+Alt+Click on it to see the mask)
You can use a transform tool to match the scales (I did not in my example)
then because of depth of field, I selected the part which needed to be sharpened
Below a quicky dirty-snake.xcf (take a look at the Channels dialog to see what type of selections I did)
layers were duplicated before each step to allow you to see how I did it
https://filetransfer.io/data-package/YKdMF2AQ#link

result: yep I did over sharpened, but you get the picture (sorry for the pun )

Thanks for the effort, guys.

Lots of ways to go about this, I see. Plenty to learn.

Just did what Patrice mentioned + a little cloning

Nicely done Sallyanne