Removing Dust

PNA · Apr 9, 2006

Im scanning film on a flatbed and theres lots of dust cant be avoided.
I tried searching the threads but nothing came up about using the Digital Ice program ...... and what would the procedure be in PS CS2 (if there is one) to remove the dust with the computer.
Help, please.

Big Mike · Apr 9, 2006

There was a recent thread about removing dust in Photoshop. There are several different ways to go about it.

One way is the dust & scratches filter. Problem is that is affects the whole image. One way around that would be to run the filter on a duplicate layer and mask off the areas that you don't want the filter to affect.

Another, more tedious way to deal with dust spots would be to use the healing brush or clone stamp...zoom in and start getting rid of the spots....one by one.

Rob · Apr 10, 2006

"Digital ICE" was the name of a bit of software which came with my Nikon Coolscan V. I have a very dim view of this piece of equipment and its software. When it didn't crash your computer, turn the scans purple, or produce results which a flatbed could beat, it was randomly applying sharpening and noise reduction techniques which were so clumsy that the final product was useless.

In PS CS2 as Mike has said, there's two main techniques for sorting out marks - you fudge over them using clone and healing type brushes, or you go for some kind of normalisation routine, like a dust and scratches, or gaussian blur. This swaps pixels around and takes ones which stand out for luminance and makes them more like surrounding areas.

The big downside to the filters technique, as mentioned, is that when strong enough to get rid of the dust/scratches/marks, it often makes the image unacceptably soft. The answer to this is not applying USM until it comes back.

If you've got a lot of images which you wish to display on the web, then the filters route will be quicker. However, if you're printing something, then the old fashioned method of manually getting rid of every blob using a brush tool is the way forward.

Rob

2framesbelowzero · Apr 10, 2006

Big Mike said:
There was a recent thread about removing dust in Photoshop. There are several different ways to go about it.

One way is the dust & scratches filter. Problem is that is affects the whole image. One way around that would be to run the filter on a duplicate layer and mask off the areas that you don't want the filter to affect.

Another, more tedious way to deal with dust spots would be to use the healing brush or clone stamp...zoom in and start getting rid of the spots....one by one.

Using Photoshop is to remove the dust data and substitute it for something else. What's a good way to clean the film free of dust beforehand ?

PNA · Apr 10, 2006

2framesbelowzero said:
Using Photoshop is to remove the dust data and substitute it for something else. What's a good way to clean the film free of dust beforehand ?

Your question is probably the real issue at hand.....and the best way in PS, as suggested, is the brush tool. Too much blur with the scratch and dust tool.

"The answer to this is not applying USM until it comes back." Please explain,,,,,

Thanks

Rob · Apr 10, 2006

acsonpg said:
Your question is probably the real issue at hand.....and the best way in PS, as suggested, is the brush tool. Too much blur with the scratch and dust tool.

"The answer to this is not applying USM until it comes back." Please explain,,,,,

Thanks

Well, making an image blurry using something like dust n scratches filter will reduce the detail. You can partially improve the situation by sharpening, but using blur to get rid of dust, and then sharpen to bring back the edges will leave nasty artifacts like jaggies.

Everything's relative, but it is my opinion the the dust and scratches filter is only really any use when an image has large portions of dark or light which can be masked off and edited without losing any detail. It's a clumsy tool if used generally over a whole image - just try it and look at the results.

Rob