I am fairly new to this, so I've been given lots of photos from friends and relatives who 'hope I can make this look better'. Often the image is very speckled when I see it in photoshop. Other than the despeckle filter and the healing tool, (which gives only so-so results) I don't know of a way to remove the speckles. :( Can anyone suggest another (better) way? If it would help I could upload a sample. THANKS.

It is always best if you can upload a sample. But there are many posts in the help requested forum that will give you some clues as to different approaches to this type of problem.

Christine

As Xaran said, a sample is very important. It could be general noise removal that is needed, not random speckles that need to be removed. Or it could be both. My guess is it's noise. And for this, Neat Image (which has a free version) would be the way to go. But let's see what you are talking about. Otherwise we are just speckle speculating.

Well you can use the history brush to remove speckles. However what I usually do is to copy the layer and use the median blur filter until all of the speckles are gone. Than I switch layers. The top layer is the original layer and the bottom layer is the median filter layer. With the top layer selected I use a brush with varying opacity to carefully erase away the speckles.

Using the History pallet you Apply the median filter and take a snapshot of the median blurred photo and back up one history state and paint in the blur with the history brush. Whatever.

Here are two attachments.

The first is a uploadable portion of "Donald". My sister sent this as aTIFF file to me, and I couldn't upload it in that format. I saved it in Photoshop as a JPEG.

The second is a piece of my friend's "Face". I scanned this at 600 dpi (Is this too low?) as a RGB mode image. There are spots that are damage, but "beneath" the damage is a mottled type of spotting or speckling.

Thanks for looking at them.

I think most of the speckling in this picture is just pixelation from increasing the size.

You should be able to eliminate most of it either by using something like NeatImage or the blur and overlay facilities within Photoshop.

The attached copy was done very quickly but used just Photoshop.

Christine

Thanks, Christine:

I don't know if this information is helpful, but here goes: the photos I uploaded are small areas I cut from the larger photos (they were too large to upload).

The actual approximate size of the uploaded smaller "face.jpg" is about 1 inch square more or less.

The actual approximate size of the uploaded "donald.jpg" is 1.5 inches square more or less.

I hope this helps.

Thanks again.

Tangerine (is that really your name?)

if the photo is 1 inch and is scanned at 600dpi the screen will still display it at 72 ppi (MAC) and 96 ppi (Windows) which equates to 6 or 7 inches in size at 100%. This is where the pixelation becomes more visible.

Christine

Thanks, Christine, for your reply. What type of overlay did you use in Photoshop?

Any thoughts about the speckled "Donald" file. I wonder if the speckling is due to the TIFF file format somehow.

Overlay - duplicate the layer and change the layer mode to soft light.

The other picture appears to have the same problem. although there could be some texture on the actual photo which can be very difficult to get rid of.

Usual recommendation for this is re-scan with the original at a different ange to see if it reduces it. Also try overlaying this scan on the first with opacity reduced, after turning in photoshop.

Christine