Polaroid dust and scratches

[Welles]

Hey Erik,

About all that cloning. Polaroid makes an excellent Dust and Scratch Removal Utility (plugin with a fancy name). It's free (worth every penny and then some) and unbelievably effective.

http://www.polaroid.com/service/soft...r/poladsr.html

[John1]

Sorry Erik, don?t want to hijack your thread, but I felt I had to comment on Welles post.

About all that cloning. Polaroid makes an excellent Dust and Scratch Removal Utility (plugin with a fancy name). It's free (worth every penny and then some) and unbelievably effective.

I experimented with it Welles, but it's only effective in some areas, it's not the perfect solution however.

I've used an image that has several scratches and dust (see attachment in 2nd post)

The Polaroid's filter removed the dust and scratches, but left behind lots of white spots, spots that you can't get rid of with any of its settings, so I just ended up with a new problem.

I then used a different approach. I used Alien Skin Image Doctor's ?scratch remover? ( http://www.alienskin.com/idoc/idoc_filters.html ) to remove the most important scratches. The downside of this filter is that it can only be used with single scratches, but it does this in a very convincing way! (you have to see it to believe it).
Luckily enough you can use CTRL+F to redo the filter with its previous settings as explained in their manual, to attack all the other scratches. It took me about 2 or 3 min with the lasso tool. Then I copied that layer and used the Polaroid filter to remove the smaller dust particles and scratches and moved down the opacity of this layer to about 75%.

Only then did I see a result that impressed me. It can be even better if I had taken the time to fine tune Image Doctor's settings.

Maybe he Polaroid filter works better with other images, I don?t know, I couldn?t find any to experiment with.

Welles, thanks for mentioning this filter, because this works great with Image Doctor!

[John1]

And here's the original

[John1]

Another thing I discovered that might be useful; open the original, duplicate it twice, use the Polaroid filter on the top layer, set the blending mode of this layer to difference, then merge this layer with the layer below and there you have your dust and scratches in B&W. Can be very useful to experiment with, I know that I'm going to! [excited]

[Erik]

Well, if this is hijacking, then I am very pleased with it!
Very useful information!
So there you have a perfect mask of your dust and scratches...
Hehe...something new to try out after these two...

One other thing: these plugins have a manual, and it is best to read it, and have it at your side the first week (or more) you get acquainted with them.
Back to work...

[Welles]

Interesting tests, John1. I've only used the Polaroid filter for taking care of the light flecks of dust on scans, similar to the ones visible in Erik's original scan. In my uses I stay away from the Mask Size altogether, keep the Defect Level less than 25% and small tile size. So I guess I shouldn't have waxed quite so enthusiastic about the total effectiveness of the Polaroid filter but in this case (Erik's project) it would work wonders.

Your sample blue/white images are sure an impressive test of scratch filters! Good show. I'm also glad to read your report of the ImageDoc filter. I'll take another look at it. Of particular interest to me is the JPEG artifact component of the package. I thought I tried those filters out when they were first offered and wasn't taken with them. Time for a reassessment.

Cheers!