I wanted to show how to clean-up some annoying items that are in the way when photographing some landscape images. Here I went to the Meeting House in my community to show a visual before & after. I was using an OMD-1 camera with a 7.5mm Fisheye lens. I did not need to correct for the fisheye distortion because I purposely centered the Meeting House in the center area of the image which minimizes the Fisheye Bowing Effect of the 7.5mm lens. In Photoshop I selected the area with the distracting leaves with the Photoshop Lasso Tool with a feathered setting of 10 pixels, which will create a softer edge on the retouching area layer. Then I used Copy, then Paste to have the leaves on a separate layer in Photoshop. Having the leaves on a separate layer you can then use Filter > Noise> Dust & Scratches to remove the leaves. When using the Dust & Scratches you have to enter the Radius amount & Threshold amount you want. Here I used a Radius of 43 & a Threshold amount of 48. While using Dust & Scratches you will see a preview of the effect before you commit to doing it. If you need more or less just enter a higher or lower number. Even after you run the filter if you want more or less effect go to the history and go back and you can adjust your amount. If you go to much it will look a little smeary, too little you will still see some of the leaves. You can also see the effect in Preview before using it. Basically you are relying on the Preview for the amounts you need to use. Using Dust & Scratches might take a few tries, but comes in handy now & then.
A classic!
Thanks Eliza! Thought it might be an interesting technique for some!
Thanks for sharing.
You are welcome! Just trying to show some simple retouching techniques!
Very nice, Reed!
Thanks Donna!
Very nice!
Thanks Belinda! This technique comes in handy to cleanup distractions in landscapes & other images.
Thanks for sharing that technique, Reed. I’ve used dust and scratches for damaged film images but hadn’t considered it for this application.
Thanks Steve! It comes in handy now & then. But you have to balance the dust & scratches values for each image area you are working on.