Cleaning Up Sensor Dust Spots

[GB1]

Ok Ladies and Gentlemen. I should have gotten my digital sensor cleaned before I shot out to the desert, and now I have some clean up to do. Unfortunately while some pix are a snap to fix, others are much harder - like this one, where the splotch is on textured sand. It is right there just left of center and above the dark sand depression (there may be another in the clouds on top right side, but that one isn't too noticeable).

Any ideas/pointers on how to approach this one? Pixel by pixel doesn't sound too exciting.

Thanks, and yeah I will get that sensor cleaned

G

[Franglais]

If you have NX2 software then you can make a dust correction image and NX2 will wipe out the spot for you automatically.

If you don't - use Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or something and use the clone tool. You take a piece of detail from a similar, ajacent part of the image and replace the area with the spot.

[SmartWombat]

Or try SensorKleen software, it removed the dust spots and recovers the underlying image from the darkened area and adjusts the colour/brightness to match the surroundings.
http://www.imagetrendsinc.com/produc...nsor_smart.asp

Tried it after my first PMA, the Pro version is claimed to be better.
The first version amazed me, so this newer version is worth checking out.

[GB1]

Thanks fellows.

Charles, I opened it in PS - which I only use about 1/3rd of the time - and used the Spot Healing Brush. Seems to work Ok here .. Not 100%, but not bad either. I think I can play w/ it and get it even better.

Paul, I DL'd that app and tried it. Seems to work, but hard to tell because it puts about 100 watermarks on the image, right over part of the area that I wanted cleaned up, incidentally, so very hard to see the difference. On a negative beat it has seems to have done some other effect on the image, like sharpened it, or something ... see the attached. The image on the left is the unprocessed and the right side is SensorKleen. One can see the edge of the oval is 'glowing'

G

[SmartWombat]

I found it was sensitive to chroma distortion, so I had to clean up the image first.
It didn't work well at all with my EF-S 10-22 because it had so much colour fringing.
Did you try to clean up the full size image, or the reduced forum size?

[GB1]

I found it was sensitive to chroma distortion, so I had to clean up the image first.
It didn't work well at all with my EF-S 10-22 because it had so much colour fringing.
Did you try to clean up the full size image, or the reduced forum size?

I tried it on the unedited, original 3872 pix image. They do say something about using it on 20+ images at a time: perhaps it learns from having multiple images and does a better job like that (not sure.. that sounds like a complicated algorithm).

[gahspidy]

GB, I have never had much luck with the healing brush, but i do find that the patch tool is very effective in some image areas. Circle the dust spot with it, then move the circled area to a nearby area with similar pattern and texture. It does all the cloning, smoothing and feathering.

[SmartWombat]

I tried it on the unedited, original 3872 pix image. They do say something about using it on 20+ images at a time: perhaps it learns from having multiple images and does a better job like that (not sure.. that sounds like a complicated algorithm).

It also can remember the dust positions and re-apply the same correction to each image. Like Lightroom does if you copy/paste the healing adjustments.