Spotting With The History Brush

[Jakaleena]

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How to use your History Brush
to clean up those dust bunnies!

[Ed_L]

Another good one Jak. I think we can begin calling you Queen Tut!

Ed

[Jakaleena]

Does that mean Steve Martin will be popping by to sing to me soon?

[DJ Dubovsky]

Wow, good results Jak. Hey you should try that Polaroid Dust and scratches plugin Doug found. Lots of control.
DJ

[DannyRaphael]

After applying the D&S or Gaussian blur filters and before taking the snapshot, consider adding a little Noise to the blur layer. Shoot for graininess as close as possible to the grain level of the original layer. That way the History Brush not only fixes the scratches/dust spots, it also attempts to replace the orginal texture as well.

This isn't a big deal for small defects, but for larger ones it helps avoid patches of unnatural smoothness.

Also, when using the History Brush, try setting the blend mode to "darken" to zap the light spots...and then set the blend mode to "lighten" to zap the dark spots/scratches.

[Jakaleena]

Great ideas, Danny. I especially like the one about adding noise since I always had waited until I was finished to select smooth spots and add noise. That will be a real time saver.

One question, you mentioned to the blur "layer" - is there a way to make an empty layer just to make the blur on? I tried it and it didn't seem to work.

[DannyRaphael]

Normally I add the noise to the layer to which GB or D&S has been applied, but now that you mention it, even more flexibilty could be achieved as follows:

On top of the "Blur" layer...
1. Create a new layer ("Grain").
2. Fill with 50% gray
3. Add Noise/Grain/Texture of choice **
4. Change blend to Overlay (or try others)
5. Muck with opacity of "Grain" layer until desired results achieved.
6. Be sure the "Original" layer is turned off.
7. Take a snapshot (option: "Merged Layers"); this picks the "Blur" and "Grain" layers.

Proceed to use the History Brush as you described to "paint those dust spots away."

If the results aren't what you want, you could go back and recreate/fine tune the "Grain" or "Blur" layers, and/or mess with opacity and/or blends between them, take another snapshot and try again.

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Gosh, I LOVE this site. I learn so much during dialogs like these!

~Danny~

** I don't understand the technical particulars, but it appears that some fiters, Noise and Grain among them, need "something" (besides transparency) against which to operate and generate results. Knowing PS, there are probably other ways to do this, but so far this is the one that works for me.

[Jakaleena]

it appears that some fiters, Noise and Grain among them, need "something" (besides transparency) against which to operate

Yeah, that's where I was getting stuck. I was just creating an empty layer and finding that I couldn't do what you described...

Thanks Danny.

[Doug Nelson]

I also use this technique to clean up acne and other blemishes on skin [details]