Any way to remove a million sensor dust spots?

I'm using PS CS2 and CS5.

This is a small crop of overcast sky. It's only 5% of the spots on the entire image. Too many to use the spot/healing brush tools.

Any way to remove them quickly without using something to do with blur?

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Here's a median filter, 11. I guess the size of the median filter would depend upon the full res image size - give it a shot. The idea is to choose a median filter size that is the same size as the dust spots, so that the spots are replaced with the median of the surrounding pixels - since the surrounding pixels are a lot less contrasty than the dust spots, the median values of the surroundings that replace the dust spots are almost seamless. You may have to apply the median filer on a duplicate of the image and then build a layer mask to paint in the sky so that the median filter does not alter the non-sky areas where neighboring pixels vary significantly and fine detail is destroyed while median filter sized edges are preserved.

kirk

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Here's a median 11 and add noise 1% gaussian, monochromatic, to break up the smoothness and restore some of the original grain.

kirk

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Here's a difference image between your original and the median+add noise. Notice how just the spots are isolated - this is the filter you seek! I knew that image processing course I took in grad school way back when would pay off....

Kirk

[/nerd_session]

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It's late, I'm tired, I've got to get to bed, but my gawd, you're a friggin' genius. I'm stunned! Absolutely stunned at those examples! Not sure what the median filter is, never heard of it, but I'll figure it out.

The image I was working on had great potential, but I gave up and moved on.

But not now!

Thank you!

Well, after reading your post I just couldn't go to bed, so I cranked up photoshop and applied the median filter. It pretty well trashed the image.

So I duped the layer, applied the filter, made a mask, then brushed in the filter where needed.

Unbelievable! Wherever I brushed it sucked up spots like a damned Hoover vacuum cleaner! How come I didn't know about this before! You may think I'm joking, but this is the biggest PS revelation I've had in years!

You saved the image! What can I say?! Thanks ! !

i would be interested to see how the "spot remover" in ACR copes with those. I would think it would do a pretty good job. Not as clever as the median filter of course, that is very impressive

Yay!

Kirk

Sounds you have a good solution.
Just an FYI you can also do it with the clone tool set to lighten. Choose the largest section you can find with no spots for your selection then use a soft brush over the image at about 80% or so.

...by the way you probably already know this but if you use a larger F-stop those spots will not show up as much.

Shockey wrote in post #11822010
...by the way you probably already know this but if you use a larger F-stop those spots will not show up as much.

Yes I do, but thanks. Your post may help somebody else who does not.

It was shot at f22 (which is also diffractionville), but it had to be. It was one of those situations where I wanted to get smoothing on moving water and was forced to crank aperture down to lengthen shutter. (No ND's at the time). Same shot was taken at f16, f11, f8, etc. but the water smoothing did not look as good on them as the f22. A rock and a hard place as they say.

by the way, you probably know this, but your sensor needs cleaning.

Kirk

kirkt wrote in post #11823190
by the way, you probably know this, but your sensor needs cleaning.

Kirk

Really? Well, I don't know. Here's a square inch of print at 360. I'm only counting about 30-50 spots. Do you think people would really notice that few?

(It's from some old 2007 pics I was going thru. Boring stories are not necessary, but it had to do with taking pictures in a tropical storm and a little disaster that happened. It's been taken care of since then. )
.

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Picture North Carolina wrote in post #11819428
Any way to remove them quickly without using something to do with blur?

Another option:

Copy layer.
Filter > Noise > Dust and scratches.

Thanks, Rene. I'll look into it. Wasn't aware of that filter, either.

I think I learned something important in this thread. Apparently I reached a comfort level in PS with the things I daily used, then progressed no further. Looks like I need to get back into the books.