Hi I have a photo that I try to clean on Photoshop. The photo is covered of tiny small dots (mostly on the bottom part and corners). I usually use the clone tool for removing small marks but when there are so many I cant even fit the clone tool next to the dots and it’s extremely tedious. Any other tool can help? and how? thanks
Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.
Dust and scratches filter (noise..dust and scratches). Duplicate layer, and apply the dust and scratches filter to the duplicate layer. Pull the threshold slider to 0 and then pull the blur radius (?) slider to whatever value kills off the worst scratch. Better to go one over than one under. Then pull the threshold slider all the way to the right (999?) and then ease it back to the left until just the scratches disappear.
I would then use the erase tool to kill of the top layer layer where the filter might have over-zealously interferred with image detail (plant leaves, eyeglasses, etc). I would use a layer mask to do it, but the eraser will work fine.
The Eddie Tapp Back to the Future technique also uses the Dust and Scratches filter, but after applying it, you make a snapshot, target the snapshot, go back one step in History to right before you applied the filter, then use the History Brush with the snapshot targeted to swiftly make the spots disappear as if by magic.
I totally agree Ramon. I usually paint this filter back in using a layer mask, as an alternative to the history brush.
My experience is that many soft images (particularly not-so-fantastic scans) can afford a pretty liberal dose of this filter. When processing scans for the screen, swiftly would be to ziew at size and look only for detail that might be a problem.
What are the big advantages to history painting over layer masks? Is it just saved clicks or something much more?
You end up with a bit less clutter with the History brush. But, above all, you can use the History brush in Darken or Lighten modes to get rid of scratches and spots.
There are some very clever techniques that have been developed in the past. In addition to those mentioned above, there are a couple devised by Katrin Eismann which are very effective.
However, I think these have been largely rendered obsolete for much retouching work by the introduction of the Spot Healing Brush. With a little practice this tool can be used to remove blemishes almost miraculously, blending them into the surrounding image with lightning speed.
You may find it beneficial in some cases to run the Dust and Scratches filter to get rid of the finer blemishes first.
A lot of images I’ve worked with have 1,000 spots or more, so anything with handwork is kind of out the door. Is there a way to apply the healing brush as a filter, per se?
Dust and scratches is lovely in that, if applied correctly, will only change pixels inside the scratch, as opposed to healing/clone which changes pixels at the brush bounds. But it does do a much better job of erasing the scratches. A lot of time the results from the d&s filter only end up "good enough" or to a point where "you’ll never see it," which for many applications translates to "unacceptable."
Also, the healing brush is pretty awful around areas of contrast and I find myself fiddling a lot to avoid capturing data from dark areas and spilling it into light areas? Any hints?
Ramon: I played with the history brush and can’t figure out how to paint in and out like you can in a mask. I find the binary foreground/background x to be almost second nature. Is it just matter of learning to e and y back and forth (which seems to me clunkier, and not so close to the modifier keys), or am I missing something?
I do love the idea of being able to apply the brush blending modes in their full variety on any given layer. Maybe that trumps it all, I’m not sure.
Is there a way to apply the healing brush as a filter, per se?
Not that I know of. Pity.
…avoid capturing data from dark areas and spilling it into light areas? Any hints?
Paint along the boundaries. There is a lot of practice involved and of course the tool isn’t ideal for all situations. But that’s why we have such an armoury of blemish bashers.
For particular reasons of my own, I tend to avoid keyboard shortcuts whenever I can, rather than clutter my mind with having to learn the key combos. Therefore, I cannot be of any assistance to you there. :/
I just tackle all scratches first before changing blending modes to get to the dust spots, and so on. It’s really, extraordinarily fast Βeven with hundreds or thousands of blemishes.
What I would suggest is that you try Google to find the Eddie Tapp Back to the Future QT video, which is available for free somewhere* on the web, as well as a part of the video tutorials sold on CDs.
The main graphic loads, but none of the jpgs, on the software cinema site.
I also saw only a partially loaded page in Safari (latest, natch) — no links, q-marks for missing images. I had better results w/ Firefox. The list of presenters seemed to be mis-linked by one or two entries. I.e, you click on B’s name and you get A’s videos. Good videos, though. Thanks to Ramon for mentioning this site.
