I think that for anyone who deals with restoring old photos, removing stains and scratches, along with face recovery, is an essential aspect: if Topaz were to be able to provide an AI-based solution to these needs, at an adequate and not excessive cost, perhaps it would have no rivals on the market for this sector.
3 Likes
I would love to see this as an enhancement I could add too. One that could be applied and processed prior to all other enhancements as dust/scratch removal seems to inherently soften images dramatically at least it has done historically in PS.
It just feels like a natural part of the workflow when improving images. I uderstand that Topaz was developed for digi pics but nonetheless loads must like myself use it on scans simply because weâre either scanning prints or dont have a drum scanner or a Flextight. I personally am scanning with a Plustek 8100 and use photo Ai on my scans regularly. When it comes to digicam files, I never really use it on digi pics from my D750, D800, D850 only really my older cams files like my Fuji S1 pro and my D200 and D300s files
You could write a photoshop action to automate the dust removal. I wrote such and action for the very problem you have. Dup the background to another layer, use unsharp mask to exaggerate the white dust specs and copy the image to quick mask. Invert and run Minimum filter to expand the black dots (2-3 round or square) then return to selection, Dup background to a new layer (you can discard the unmask sharpen layer) and apply Dust and scratches filter (2, low tolerance/ experiment). Deselect. Add a layer mask and invert (to hide the layer) and then paint into the layer mask to reveal the Dust and Scratches effect. Itâs quicker than the spot heeling tool and you can be selective as the filter will take in and blur fine detail you might want to preserve.
I processed a couple of photos tonight with the latest release and it appears you solved the problem with Topaz exiting after saving a photo. Thank you.
I would love to have you develop AI to remove dust and scratches from scanned photo prints. Epson does a fabulous job of removing dust and scratches from negatives with their Digital Ice feature. However, for some reason that doesnât work on scanned prints. Their non Digital Ice Epson dust removal doesnât work very well. Paintshop Pro also has two dust and scratch removal features. One is for the whole photo. That doesnât work very well. The other is for individual scratch and dust spec individually. That works well but is tedious to use because it requires correcting every spec or scratch manually. It can take up to an hour to remove all the scratches and dust specs from some of my hundred year old family photos. Thanks for considering this. Your program is becoming better every release.
Hey is there some way you could share your Photoshop action?
Hi There,
I tried posting the action but the website restricts to certain types of files (changing the suffix didnât trick it either!) So Iâve posted a simple step-by step that hopefully is clear. I invert the layer mask of the affected image so I can see what needs fixing. Thisis a simplified version of the action. Another version specifically tackles only small dots and not large areas as this does.
It should be tweaked to your specific needs. For instance you might not need to add the camera RAW grain step as I did if your image is fairly grain free. This step be tailored to the type of grain you have- so some experimentation might be necessary.
But you can see the results in my before and after that should illustrate its effectiveness, and the whole thing took 10-15 mins with some heeling brush tweaking.
I hope that helps!
Request feature AI powered Sensor Dust Spot Detector / Remover to remove those annoying and unwanted small sensor dust spots which spoil the ultimate quality of our images.
Topaz provides many excellent tools to improve the quality of images and RAW images including to denoise and upscaling of cameras. The one item which would round out these options is Sensor Dust Spot Detector / Remover. The feature would work as a two stage process to: a) identify sensor dust spots and then b) automatically heal or retouch the spots. Both parts of this process should have a granularity or strength adjustment settings so that the detection sensitivity can be set and the healing sensitivity adjusted.
With most modern DSLR/Mirrorless cameras small dust particles get inside the camera and even with manufacturers options to reduce dust or having your camera regularly cleaned professionally dust can accumulate on the camera sensor causing image imperfections. Even with all the other Photo AI tools, dust spots remain and can easily be hundreds per image.
Sensor Dust Spots are often present in all images, and most noticeable at 100% zoom or more common as you have cameras with higher resolution where on small piece of dust can affect a few adjacent pixels on the sensor.
Sensor Dust Spots are typically more visible in images shot with a high F stop value and will often appear as a round partially out of focus marks against the rest of the image. This is most noticeable when you have blue skies or other areas of reasonably uniform colour.
If you want to see how dusty your sensor is, take a manually-set out of focus image of a plain white or light-coloured wall using a high aperture (F16 or higher) setting for your camera. Then open the image in your favourite editor and zoom in to 100% and look especially around the top of the image and especially when you use a RAW image file with high resolution sensor.
Sure sensor dust spots can be removed by many retouch tools, but that has to be done for every spot which can be many and then repeated on every single image. As an example some techniques which can be used in Photoshop use a combinations of min and max values plus thresholds which can help to create a layer mask. Once dust spots are identified, then existing retouch tools can be very effective at making corrections, but again this is a manual process for each image.
PS other tools like Liminar have such a function, it would be good to have everythign in one place and one tool.
It would be great if Topaz Photo AI could include a Dust and Scratch removal tool in a future update. The âDenoiseâ feature does not remove dust and scratches.
This would save a lot of time removing dust and scratches from scanned prints and film. It would also be useful for removing physical dust and other imperfections from digital pictures. There are expensive third party plugins out there, but I would much prefer a solution within Topaz AI rather than buying another product.
Kind regards
Chris
Hi. Please take a minute and search the forum before making suggestion
This idea has been suggested several times before; it would be more beneficial to place your vote with one of the others instead of creating repeated suggestions and ideas
Here are some of the links
https://community.topazlabs.com/t/remove-dust-spots-and-scratches-from-scanned-photos/39117
Thanks
Thank you for the suggestion and the links.
Kind regards
Chris
1 Like
Most of my scanned photos are from old prints which suffer from white spots and scratches. They can be removed with the healing brush in Lightroom and Photoshop but this is very time consuming. It would be great if Topaz Photo AI could address this too.
I agree⊠seems like a perfect use case for AI.
2 Likes
YES, that would be a most welcome addition. I have lots of old pictures that need that
1 Like
This might not need much complex AI. I pre-process my scanned photos with the âDust and Scratchesâ filter in Photoshop Elements, which has existed for about 20 years. Just the ability to add that filer into the pipeline would do it.
Our team is actively looking into this feature request! If any users are able to share work with the team for review where the files need Dust/Spot/Scratch removal, please send them over to the following Dropbox link:
Thanks again for the suggestion Topaz Labs Community!
1 Like
Here are some examples for the dust and scratch model that we are working on. If you have files to test, please upload them to the dropbox John shared above and send an email to lingyu.kong@topazlabs.com so I know to process and return your images back.
Before (top) and after (bottom)
Before (top) and after (bottom)
3 Likes
