How to rid your close-ups of dust and scratches with Photohsop

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One of the challenges of close-up photography is to capture a small object as pristinely as possible. Human eyesight is no match for a powerful camera lens. Once you import your photos and view them full screen, you’ll notice objects that looked spotless to the naked eye are in fact littered with dust, fibers, and other imperfections.

This is something I struggle with daily as a toy photographer; sadly, no amount of careful cleaning and dusting can guarantee a flawless photo. Adobe Photoshop includes a number of excellent tools to help you scrub your close-up shots clean. (This article uses Photoshop CS6 as an example, but many of the tools referenced can also be found in both Photoshop CS4 and CS5, as well as recent versions of Photoshop Elements. Apps like Pixelmator 2.0 and SnapHeal also have great tools to help you clean up photos.)

Spot Healing Brush

The first weapon you’ll want to wield against errant dust and rogue fibers is Photoshop's Spot Healing Brush, which repairs spots using the color and texture in the surrounding area. It’s also rather good at repairing small nicks and scratches on the object itself.

Open your photo and zoom in to 100 percent. Now choose the Spot Healing Brush (Band Aid icon) from Photoshop's tool panel. You’ll want to set an appropriate size for the brush before you get to work. Control-click (or right-click) the canvas to call up the brush options, choose one of the default round brushes, and adjust the size to 10 pixels (or smaller). The panel’s other settings are usually fine for most touch-up work:

• Hardness=100 percent

• Spacing=25 percent

• Angle=0 degrees

• Roundness=100 percent

You might also notice three brush types in the tool options at the top of the window: Proximity Match, which examines the pixels around the brush stroke you make to determine a patch source; Create Texture, which looks only at the pixels within the brush stroke to create a pattern fill; and Content Aware, which samples nearby areas to maintain the color, luminosity, and texture within the targeted area. Content Aware is the default brush method and the most effective—it also detects and attempts to rebuild edges and seams—so make sure it is selected before you continue.

Once you’ve sorted out those settings, find a dust speck that sits in the midst of a somewhat uniform area; it can have texture, but it should not be bordering a seam. A single click of the brush should eliminate the spot instantly. Now look for a small scratch, hair, or fiber on the object. This time, click and drag the brush, snaking it along the shape of the debris. It too should disappear instantly. Keep attacking dust and debris with this tool; in a few minutes, you should have a handle on how it works.

The Spot Healing Brush can be unpredictable along edges or seams. In these situations, you might find that the brush works better if you click and drag clear across the edge or seam, rather than just clicking it once. Always avoid dragging the brush in a squiggly motion across a seam, because this will result in either wonky seams or seams with gaps.

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