Removing Scan Dust Spots using Adobe Photoshop CS

Ever notice no matter how clean you keep your scanner bed and prints that after scanning there are always tons of small dust specks on your scans?

Well, there is a simple & easy way to eliminate those specks and it does not involve using any of the cloning tools!!

After scanning you would first make any color corrections, cropping or enhancements needed. Before proceeding to the next steps you will want to take a snap shot of your image.

To take a snap shot open the History palette and click on the small camera icon located at the bottom of the palette. This will place a snap shot slate in the history palette of what the image looks like at that time.

Now, locate an area in the image that contains the worst of the spots you want to remove. Zoom into that area to 100% or 200% so that you can easily see the spots.

Now, visit filter>noise>dust & scratches.

The settings you will use with the dust & scratches filter will depended on the severity of the spots and the resolution of the image. Start with both sliders all the way to the left and the Preview checkmarked. Next slide the radius slider to the right until the spots disappear. Notice that the spots disappeared but so did the grain of the image. Next slide the Threshold slider to the right. As you are sliding the threshold slider keep a close eye on the preview. Stop moving the slider when you notice the grain return to the preview. Clicking inside the preview will allow you to easily compare the original grain to what the grain will look like after applying the filter. The goal is to remove the spots but still retain the texture or grain of the image. Once you are happy with the detail click OK to apply the filter. Once the filter has been applied you will probably see that the spots are gone but that the image is now a little fuzzy.

Next open the history palette and take another snap shot. Now undo the dust & scratches filter by pushing ctrl + z (cmd + z) on the keyboard.

Once again in the history palette click on the small box to the left of the last snap shot you created. This sets the source for the history brush which you will be using next.

Select the history brush from the tool bar or hit Y on the keyboard. In the option bar set the blending mode to lighten (to remove dark spots) or darken (to remove light spots). Opacity works best between 90 to 100%.

You will now just paint over the problems areas using the appropriate blending mode to remove the spots. You can use a fairly large brush which will make fast work of removing those pesky spots!!

Printing Gradients

If you create a gradient using only one spot color, you’ll get better printing results! To do this create a gradient that goes from 100% to 0% out of the same color (rather than using white as the second color). Just drag your spot color twice to the Gradient Slider in the Gradient palette, then select one of the color stops, go to the color palette and change its percentage to zero in the Tint Percentage field.

Transform Tip for Adobe Photoshop

You may find that you enter a value in the Transform palette and, after pressing enter, you get an odd value. For example, you type in 3 for the Width, but after you press enter , it says 3.01. One factor that can cause this is a function called Snap to Point. Turn this off in the View menu, and you should now get the exact value you enter.

Using the Healing Brush, Patch Tool & Color Replacement Tools in Photoshop CS©

You can fade the opacity and blend mode of the Healing brush by immediately selecting Edit > Fade Healing Brush after using the tool.

Using the Healing brush with the blending mode set to Replace makes it behave more like the Clone Stamp tool (in that it doesn't automatically try to blend the source and destination), and blends noise more effectively while cloning.

You can use the Healing brush and Patch tool between two open documents. Simply option (Mac) /alt (Win) click in the source document and then clone in the destination document.

You can use the Healing brush and Patch tool on blank layers. Check the Use All Layers in the option bar.

To modify a selection while using the patch tool, simply hold down the shift key to add to the selection and/or the option (Mac)/alt (Win) key to subtract - just like the other selection tools.

Tip for using the Shape Tools in Adobe Photoshop

With many of the shape tools, you can change the location of the shape while you create it on the canvas. Hold down the spacebar to temporarily "interrupt" the tool you are using, allowing you to move the shape to another position.