Easy dust and scraches clean up

[tobey bilek]

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Sometimes you see this with scans and the usual tools can be time consuming. Here is an easy way.

 

Draw a lasso selection around the offending areas or select with the tool of your choice. Feather the selection 1 or 2 pixels.

 

With selection active, hit command (mac) or ctrl J to move ONLY the selection to a new layer.

 

Use the arrow keys to move the selection 1 pixel at a time.

 

If the dust is light, set blend mode to darken. If the offenders are dark, set the blend mode to lighten. Presto, defects gone.

 

Repeat if you have both light and dark spots with different blend modes on each.

 

I have used this many times and it works well and hundreds of small defects can be cleaned up easily all at one time.

 

The patch tool is good for scratches. So is the clone. Secret is patch or clone to a new BLANK layer, then merge down.

 

Don`t forget you can use multiple non intersecting selections.

 

With digital, I never have to repair anything.

[andybarton]

Or use the healing brush

 

With digital, you have to clean up dust and grease spots on the sensor.

[biglouis]

I would be interested to know if there are any packages that claim to clean up dust on images within photoshop by some means. Does any such add-on exist?

 

LouisB

[tobey bilek]

Been doing digi two years now and had two dust spots on sensors which were dispatched with a blower. I am careful where and how I change lenses. I also do preventative cleanouts after outings before dust migrates to the sensor. Nikons don`t get grease on the sensors. That is strictly Leica. And the film Leicas don`t do it.

 

As for the usual tools, they work but this does everything with a few keystrokes. Expediency rules.

[RITskellar]

Sometimes you see this with scans and the usual tools can be time consuming. Here is an easy way.

 

Draw a lasso selection around the offending areas or select with the tool of your choice. Feather the selection 1 or 2 pixels.

 

With selection active, hit command (mac) or ctrl J to move ONLY the selection to a new layer.

 

Use the arrow keys to move the selection 1 pixel at a time.

 

If the dust is light, set blend mode to darken. If the offenders are dark, set the blend mode to lighten. Presto, defects gone.

 

Repeat if you have both light and dark spots with different blend modes on each.

 

I have used this many times and it works well and hundreds of small defects can be cleaned up easily all at one time.

 

The patch tool is good for scratches. So is the clone. Secret is patch or clone to a new BLANK layer, then merge down.

 

Don`t forget you can use multiple non intersecting selections.

 

With digital, I never have to repair anything.

 

Sounds a little complicated, when the cloning tool makes this process much easier. I don't even really think about it while I'm doing it, as it's now so natural and effective. I have lots of dust I deal with scanning many, many hundreds of old negs, etc. As I haven't the discipline to clean the negs ahead of scanning. I also pretty much always need to catch a few specs on new black & white film scans.

[Photon42]

I would be interested to know if there are any packages that claim to clean up dust on images within photoshop by some means. Does any such add-on exist?

 

LouisB

 

There's a free tool available from - you won't believe it - Polaroid:

 

http://alphatracks.com/archives/134

 

Don't expect wonders, though. I can't remember properly, but it was rather limited with regard to different TIFF file types. The plain old 8bit non-compressed surely works, of course.

 

Cheers

Ivo