Automating Healing Brush

QUESTION: Is there any way you can think of to automate dust spotting with the healing or the cloning stamps?? Please?

Maybe not what you expected...

K.T. from Houston, Texas, USA, running Windows 98, 2000, XP, Adobe Photoshop 7.01 asks this question...

[Quote] I am a digital artist for a digital wedding and portrait photographer and we have an entire wedding just covered in spots! I am very familiar with programming action files but, the mouse movements won't program. HELP! [END Quote]

Automating the Healing Brush

There are certain things you can automate with the Healing Brush, but bulk or automatic removal of dust and scratches is not one of them. You're going to have to tough it out.

Without seeing a representative set of images we cannot be much help, however you may be able to remedy many of the problems -- particularly the smaller ones -- the same way we have for many moons, long before the Healing Brush was ever invented... with the Smudge tool.

For smaller spots the Smudge tool is faster and easier than any other method. You just have to be very careful. Zoom in, and as you move from dust spot to dust spot, use the tool with a small, soft edged brush tip -- and carefully "rub" from an area of good pixels close by into the dust spot. Usually this simply smears pixels over the spot. Try it and see how you like it.

For long scratches and larger dust spots your only silver bullet is the Healing Brush or the Cloning Stamp Tool.

Sorry

Comments

[Karen]

I'm searching for a photo shop,or other programs, where I can edit a photograph. I do have photo shop 2, but it won't do what I need it to do. I have a wedding picture of my daughters that needs touched up. Her mother in law had spilt a drink on her dress, & it left big spots, & stains all over her dress. Every family picture that she was in had stains on her dress. I tried cloning, & the effect brush, & colorize, & blur brush & they don't work. A friend of mine, said she used a tool called the patch tool. She did one picture for me & it looked as if nothing was ever spilt on her dress. do you know which photo shop that I can buy with this tool on it& where can I buy it at.

Please E-mail me at My e-mail address with ATTENTION: Karen, Photo stain remover
E-Mail : [email protected]

[Dennis Reso]

What seems to work for me:
1. Create a mask for the dust off filter
(a) Open an image with a clear area (clear sky)
(b) Select quick mask mode
(c) Highlight/Select dust with a small soft brush, low flow
(c) Exit quick mask, Invert the selection.
You likely get a warning "selection not visible"

2. Save the mask in a file
(a) Using Select>Save Selection...
(b) Choose "New" document, name the channel "Dust"
(c) Image should be a black mask, with small soft dust spots
(c) Save and Close this new file ("Dust.psd").

3. Record an action which invokes the following JavaScript
(a) Use File>Scripts>Browse... to Load the script "dustOff.js"
(b) Contents of dustOff.js:
var doc = app.activeDocument;
var dust = app.open(new File("~/Desktop/Dust.psd"));

app.activeDocument = doc;
doc.selection.load(dust.channels.getByName("Dust"),
SelectionType.REPLACE,false);
doc.backgroundLayer.applyDustAndScratches(16,0);

dust.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);

4. Use File>Automate>Batch... to execute the Action.

A bit more complex scripting could probably use an already open
Dust file, and find it by name or by "previous" as needed.
This of course assumes you want to affect the "Background" layer.

[Neil Croft]

It can be done, but as Gethin Coles said, you can't really do it if the dust spot is on a fussy area of the picture.

This is how i did it, just creating a path the normal way didn't work.

So create a new action, now your recording,

1, select the rectangular marquee tool.
2. Set the selection, (just over the dust spot you are getting rid off, make sure the lines of the rectangle are inside the dust spot)
3. Right click the rectangle and select make path
4. Select the healong brush tool and alt click your source
5. In the path pallatte select stroke path (with the healing brush)

Stop Recording your action, and you can now automate a batch.

(Best to try with a few pictures in a batch first incase and detail gets under the spots etc)

[Gethin Coles]

I have used the healing brush with an action, but it only works where there are large fairly uniform areas (like cloud free skies). In your action you need to create a path and then stroke the path with the healing brush from a pre-defined pattern (in my case a clean area of sky). You create the path using glowing edges and then selecting the shadows and creating a working path from the selection.

[matt coupe]

Try area selection in quick mask for large areas then using Dust and scratchs experiment with the settings to reduce of rermove bulk D and S then return details using history brush. (matt coupe Getty Images)