I may not know about the hot spots but it look to me you can put the image into phot shop and make a layer on top of the orginal image and on the top layer you can adjust the contract or levels to get very closet to the bottom layer. Then get the transparit brush and put it at 100 and as you work your way in set it at diff levels of tranparit like 50% or 30% and so om intill you get what you wish for ; no hot spot. maybe the hard way I guess.

what you see is not what you know; it in your face