A double-dose of postcarding goodness, this Friday. As well as the usual Friday ‘Picture Postal’, here’s a curious public domain postcard currently on eBay (not from me). It’s a macabre item from Newburyport, Mass., the real decaying shoreline town that was Lovecraft’s general model for Innsmouth. Of possible interest to role-players as a story-element in a scenario, as well as being a choice bit of Americana.

Regrettable it’s flashed on the right side. But here’s my Photoshop fix for that…

Camera flash-bounce / reflection-speckling on eBay vintage pictures can be covered up, if not entirely fixed, in Photoshop:

1. Make a layer copy, invert.

2. On the copy, loosely select the flash-speckled area with the Lasso tool. Feather selection by 33. Invert and delete unwanted area.

3. On this sort of image you can now use a knockout plugin (such as Primatte) to remove more or less everything except the flash-speckle (which is now very dark).

4. Experiment with the layer overlay mode to see what works best for your picture, in blending the dark speckles back over the top of the flash-speckled area.

5. Merge. Make a few light dabs with the Burn tool, to assist with the blending.