"White Orb" Removal (BEFORE and AFTER)

Challenge #22 in the Technology Enabling Art series. Hosted by ProfHankD.
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The Fujifilm X10 and X-S1 have become infamous for "white orbs" caused by blooming of saturated pixels -- this challenge is about using post-processing to replace these artifacts with something that looks less disturbing. In this challenge, you are to submit a pair of images: an original image that is ruined by orbs (BEFORE) and a post-processed copy of the same image (AFTER). As a service to the community and an academic research project, I've created a free tool that tries to do this: http://aggregate.org/DIT/DEORBIT/ . You may use that tool and/or any editing tools you wish. Let's see how well we can make this problem go away....
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White Orb After
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I duplicated the layer and then darken the underneath layer so as to control the obtrusive white bloom. After that I use a soft eraser tool with opacity set to 65% to remove/soften the white orb on top layer.
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Submitted: Monday, 16th April, 2012 03:52 (GMT)
Taken: Saturday, 4th February, 2012
Focal length: 7.1 mm
Shutter speed: 1/9 sec
Aperture: F2.8
ISO: 800
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