Exaggerating colors in GIMP/Python

Question

I have images such as the one below from which I need to count the prominent white spots. Unfortunately my object counting algorithm is becoming confused due to those "fuzzy" white areas. It can sometimes see hundreds of objects there.

So what I'm wondering is whether there's some way to perhaps exaggerate the white spots and suppress the "fuzzy" areas either using filters in GIMP or Python libraries.

Thank you!

Answer 1

I ended up using G'MIC's Bilateral Filtering, it was the perfect tool for the job.

Answer 2

Increase the contrast in GIMP.

Answer 3

You probably want an adaptive threshold.

The modules that I know have this in Python are scikit-image and OpenCV.