8 Replies Latest reply: Aug 30, 2010 1:25 PM by deedeecz RSS

    Spot healing brush preset

    deedeecz Community Member

      Hello. I have a couple of hot pixels on the sensor and removing them individually from each picture is time consuming. Is there a way to apply the spot healing brush on one picture where needed and copy the brush strokes onto the other pictures since the spots remain stuck in exactly the same places on all images?

      In other words I'd like to batch-heal all images at once.

      Thank you,

      David

        • 1. Re: Spot healing brush preset
          Noel Carboni Community Member

          The operation of the Spot Healing Brush does not store in an action, so you'd need a full script to do the work.  And don't forget that Photoshop rotates portrait-oriented shots when opening, so you'll likely have to have conditional code in the script to handle both landscape and portrait shots.  Unfortunately I'm no script expert and can't advise on just how to do that.

           

          And keep in mind that if you're using the Spot Healing Brush in Content Aware Fill mode, it usually does pleasing work, BUT - it can do some unexpected things occasionally, so you'll certainly want to glance at the image after it's done its work.  I've seen Spot Healing with Content Aware Fill turn parts of a person's face into the background, as though you could see through them!

           

          By the way, Camera Raw had code in it with the 2003 process to deal with hot pixels in raw images...  I wonder if the 2010 Process does so as well.  I need to go test that!

           

          -Noel

          • 2. Re: Spot healing brush preset
            deedeecz Community Member

            Too bad, I was hoping that in my massive ignorance of PS I just couldn't find the right command flow. I found that "proximity match" type works much better for my tiny problems. If there was only such a code in the ACR 6 /LR3 that would save me a lot of hassle! Thanks Anyhow.

            David

            • 3. Re: Spot healing brush preset
              Noel Carboni Community Member

              Scripting certainly isn't a dead-end.  I just don't know enough about it yet to advise on specifics.

               

              However, you got me to thinking... If you really do want to do up an action, and we can leave behind the Spot Healing Brush, there is certainly the possibility of creating an action that makes a very small selection around the hot pixel(s) then does an Edit - Fill - Content Aware, or maybe a Median filter and Edit - Fade - Darken...  I just tried the concept and it works.  You'll need one for portrait and one for landscape so that the selections come out in the right place.

               

              HotPixelFix.jpg

               

              -Noel

              • 4. Re: Spot healing brush preset
                deedeecz Community Member

                Great-there's hope for me! I am really trying to jump on the Adobe wagon because I've had it with Nikon Capture NX2 being insanely slow and oftentimes crashing. I use it only because you can save the damn healing brush as a preset and apply it in batch. (and I love the UPoint tool for my selections)

                As for your suggestion, do I need to open the image as a smart object to follow your guide?

                So, first I have to make a selection/s and then Edit - Fill - ... ? If so, which tool would be best to make my tiny selections?

                • 5. Re: Spot healing brush preset
                  Noel Carboni Community Member
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                  deedeecz wrote:


                  do I need to open the image as a smart object to follow your guide?

                  So, first I have to make a selection/s and then Edit - Fill - ... ? If so, which tool would be best to make my tiny selections?

                   

                  No, it doesn't have to be a smart object.

                   

                  I'm kind of envisioning tying an action to a key that you can press when you're editing your document and want to make the change, but how you want to use it is entirely up to you.

                   

                  Actions can seem a bit geeky, but once you get the hang of recording your steps as actions, and get used to the editor in the Actions panel, they can be quite useful for making repeatable functions that can be surprisingly complex.  To record an action, name it appropriately then just do the operations you want to repeat on a representative image, then stop the recording.  Brush strokes won't record, but most everything else will.

                   

                  Since hot pixels affect probably 1 or maybe as many as 9 pixels, I'd suggest just using the rectangular marquee tool to make the very small selections (you can, of course, make more than one by holding down the shift key).  Note that this assumes you'll be using the same sized images each time, and as I mentioned the locations will be different for a portrait and a landscape image.

                   

                  Have fun with actions!

                   

                  -Noel

                  • 6. Re: Spot healing brush preset
                    Gyno-jiz Community Member

                    You might look into spot removal in ACR. There you can synchronize a batch of image very quickly.

                     

                    http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WS0D5834E0-CE56-43ef-9B56-9EB47F3F710E.html

                    • 7. Re: Spot healing brush preset
                      Hobotor Community Member

                      Hm, wouldn't it be easier to try and fix it in camera first? Try this:   set the menu to give immediate access to the sensor cleaning, then set the camera to BULB mode, push down the shutter for at least 20  seconds, then as soon as you release the shutter immediately go into  sensor cleaning mode twice.

                       

                      This is how to repair hot pixels on the sensor of a Nikon.

                       


                      Edit: By the way, if you make a pic with your lenscap on, with long enough exposure to see the hot pixels, you can use that to create a selection, invert, blur and set the whole shabang up as an action. You could do 100's of pics in 1 batch, this way.

                      • 8. Re: Spot healing brush preset
                        deedeecz Community Member

                        Hi. Unfortunately, the spot removal in the ACR is the same as LR3, meaninig that you MUST sample the source area and if not then the source will be random and that sometimes results in conspicuous, mismatched spot on the image. Proximity match method would be much better in my case. Also, correct me if I'm wrong you can't save the spot removal brush in the presets-it's simply missing from the Save Settings dialog window(it's also missing in LR3)