Adobe Ai on dust and scratch removal

Les Sarile · Jun 14, 2023

A colleague was showing me some of his results from using Adobe AI and they were very remarkable. He was showing me some of the cleanup it was able to do on very old deteriorated photo and it was impressive. So I asked him if he wouldn't mind having it work on my perfect example of a very scratched up frame of film and this are the results.

Kodak 160VC-036 Adobe AI vs Coolscan ICE by Les DMess, on Flickr

The scan I provided him was from the Coolscan 5000 and because it was such a small file it was not recommended to do 100% so he did it at 25% and 50%. Clearly 25% was nowhere near the Coolscan 5000 ICE on normal mode. Interestingly, at 50% it removed the jewelry on the corner of her eyes and forehead. At 50% it definitely removed a lot of detail. According to him, had I provided him the larger original scan that the Adobe AI would have done better.

Has anyone else used Adobe AI for this purpose specially those who use DSLR scanning?

brbo · Jun 15, 2023

I've tried it and it's useless. Removes grain (not in a good way) and real detail.

At 25% on 4.000dpi scan:

Don_ih · Jun 15, 2023

brbo said:
it's useless

I see it uses the classic way of removing scratches: smudge everything.

Les Sarile · Jun 15, 2023

brbo said:
I've tried it and it's useless. Removes grain (not in a good way) and real detail.

At 25% on 4.000dpi scan:

Was the intent on that just grain removal as I don't see much in the way of dust and scratches?

warden · Jun 15, 2023

brbo said:
I've tried it and it's useless. Removes grain (not in a good way) and real detail.

At 25% on 4.000dpi scan:

Yeah but the car is lighter, and therefore faster, without all that trim on it. ;-)

koraks · Jun 15, 2023

warden said:
Yeah but the car is lighter, and therefore faster, without all that trim on it. ;-)

Regardless, it's going downhill.

warden · Jun 15, 2023

Les Sarile said:
Has anyone else used Adobe AI for this purpose specially those who use DSLR scanning?

It's a blunt tool that is not ready for prime time as far as I can tell. Manually removing dust and scratches within Photoshop is least destructive to the image but most time consuming. If you have a million dust spots you can automate the process somewhat with Filter > Noise > Dust and Scratches and that offers more control and less damage to the underlying image than the Photo Restoration neural filter, which is a beta tool and currently performs like a beta tool.

brbo · Jun 15, 2023

Don Heisz said:
I see it uses the classic way of removing scratches: smudge everything.

No. It's much worse than just that.

Les Sarile said:
Was the intent on that just grain removal as I don't see much in the way of dust and scratches?

Does it matter? I only chose 'Scratch reduction' at 25% with every other 'enhancement' or 'reduction' turned off. It failed spectacularly.

Les Sarile · Jun 15, 2023

brbo said:
Does it matter? I only chose 'Scratch reduction' at 25% with every other 'enhancement' or 'reduction' turned off. It failed spectacularly.

Good question. Can the "AI" distinguish the difference between grain smoothing and dust&scratch removal? Seems not so much in your case.

In my example, it saw the facial jewelry and decided it was dust or scratch while still leaving a lot of scratches. Seems "AI" may still be in it's infancy.

warden · Jun 15, 2023

Les Sarile said:
In my example, it saw the facial jewelry and decided it was dust or scratch while still leaving a lot of scratches. Seems "AI" may still be in it's infancy.

stick to the non-beta tools for now, which work.

Les Sarile · Jun 15, 2023

warden said:
stick to the non-beta tools for now, which work.

This was a colleague's Adobe subscription.

What tools are you using and do you have examples to show results from it?

Cholentpot · Jun 15, 2023

koraks said:
Regardless, it's going downhill.

Staaaahp!

warden · Jun 15, 2023

Les Sarile said:
This was a colleague's Adobe subscription.

What tools are you using and do you have examples to show results from it?

The content aware spot healing brush will remove dust in a non-destructive way because it works only on the pixels you tell it to instead of the entire image. 90% of the time that's what I do.

But as I said before if you have a scan with a ton of dust you can automate the process a bit with Filter > Noise > Dust and Scratches. The results are inferior to using the healing brush due to analyzing the entire image rather than the problem areas alone so I don't tend to use it. But it's not bad, and it is better than the beta AI tool they're working on now. The images below show overall views and closeups with before and after the Filter > Noise > Dust and Scratches command:

Les Sarile · Jun 15, 2023

warden said:
The content aware spot healing brush will remove dust in a non-destructive way because it works only on the pixels you tell it to instead of the entire image. 90% of the time that's what I do.

But as I said before if you have a scan with a ton of dust you can automate the process a bit with Filter > Noise > Dust and Scratches. The results are inferior to using the healing brush due to analyzing the entire image rather than the problem areas alone so I don't tend to use it. But it's not bad, and it is better than the beta AI tool they're working on now. The images below show overall views and closeups with before and after the Filter > Noise > Dust and Scratches command:

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Thanks for the examples. Been out of the Adobe loop for a few versions now and that tool certainly can make cleanup in post a little more manageable.

At this point I am not so sure there is actual intelligence being applied in the dust and scratch removal but again I don't have the subscription to see for myself.

_T_ · Jun 15, 2023

I will use Dust & Scratches on color negatives, but generally not on black and white.

I like to take the output of the IR scan and use it to create a mask so that the filter is only acting on actual dust and scratches. Very quick to remove 90% of the problem, but you still have to go through and hit the few spots the IR scan missed.

For black and white I would have to apply the filter to a duplicated layer and then go through with the brush and mask just the areas where there is dust and scratches, but at that point you might as well use the healing brush.

Only takes a few minutes to go line by line and row by row on a 4x5 and clean up anything offending, so I don't see much utility in letting an AI decide what to retouch.
Even if I had thousands of frames to retouch on a tight deadline I don't think I'd reach for the AI. Probably accept a little softness from the Dust & Scratches before I let the computer decide what is or isn't a vital detail.

warden · Jun 15, 2023

_T_ said:
Only takes a few minutes to go line by line and row by row on a 4x5 and clean up anything offending, so I don't see much utility in letting an AI decide what to retouch.

Exactly. in this case, manual labor is quick easy and accurate. I haven’t found a good use case for letting AI dig into these sorts of simple image issues.

Les Sarile · Jun 16, 2023

_T_ said:
I will use Dust & Scratches on color negatives, but generally not on black and white.

I like to take the output of the IR scan and use it to create a mask so that the filter is only acting on actual dust and scratches. Very quick to remove 90% of the problem, but you still have to go through and hit the few spots the IR scan missed.

For black and white I would have to apply the filter to a duplicated layer and then go through with the brush and mask just the areas where there is dust and scratches, but at that point you might as well use the healing brush.

Only takes a few minutes to go line by line and row by row on a 4x5 and clean up anything offending, so I don't see much utility in letting an AI decide what to retouch.
Even if I had thousands of frames to retouch on a tight deadline I don't think I'd reach for the AI. Probably accept a little softness from the Dust & Scratches before I let the computer decide what is or isn't a vital detail.

Of course there is no ICE that works on true b&w film.

Curious why you would take the IR scan output to work on the image rather than have the scanner remove the dust and scratches automatically during the scan? Also, regarding the softness when using ICE, which scanner are you using? Since you are scanning 4X5, are you using an Epson flatbed?

brbo · Jun 16, 2023

Les Sarile said:
Curious why you would take the IR scan output to work on the image rather than have the scanner remove the dust and scratches automatically during the scan?

Because it's non-destructive and because PS content-aware fill is light years (ok, 20 years) ahead of some ICE and "ICE" implementations.

Some scanners also need to do IR pass separately from RGB pass and you can get a slight misalignment of RGB and IR data. Some softwares will then do less than perfect software part of the ICE "healing" whereas you can align the IR channel in PS so the healing part is then more accurate/better.

Les Sarile · Jun 16, 2023

brbo said:
Because it's non-destructive and because PS content-aware fill is light years (ok, 20 years) ahead of some ICE and "ICE" implementations.

Some scanners also need to do IR pass separately from RGB pass and you can get a slight misalignment of RGB and IR data. Some softwares will then do less than perfect software part of the ICE "healing" whereas you can align the IR channel in PS so the healing part is then more accurate/better.

Fine points for sure.

I've never done it so what software outputs the IR only for instance when using Epson flatbed?

warden · Jun 16, 2023

Les Sarile said:
Fine points for sure.

I've never done it so what software outputs the IR only for instance when using Epson flatbed?

VueScan does this and I assume others. Their manual is online and searchable if you want to dig in. It works with your Epson flatbed. VueScan does not use the term "ICE" for copyright reasons but I gather it's effectively the same thing and they call it "Infared Cleaning" instead. It works like ICE and you can export the infrared information independent of the image for compositing if you like, or you can just export the cleaned final RGB image just as you have been doing with the examples you showed earlier and whatever software you use.

This is not a technique I use btw. I prefer content aware healing tools to remove dust and scratches which for me are faster and easier, and avoid the misalignment issue and general image degradation brbo and others point out above that come with using ICE like tools.

Anyway here's an uncorrected image, followed by closeup showing junk on the slide, and then an IR layer which VueScan exports as a 16 bit greyscale for compositing:

_T_ · Jun 16, 2023

Les Sarile said:
Of course there is no ICE that works on true b&w film.

Curious why you would take the IR scan output to work on the image rather than have the scanner remove the dust and scratches automatically during the scan? Also, regarding the softness when using ICE, which scanner are you using? Since you are scanning 4X5, are you using an Epson flatbed?

Yes I’m using an epson v600. It doesn’t have the capacity to scan an entire 4x5 at once but i made my own film carrier that allows me to quickly scan both halves separately out of black card stock and some glue. I use the Photomerge function to stitch them together. Doing this requires that you obtain a raw scan from the v600, otherwise the two halves will not match exactly in color and value. Not a problem for me as I prefer to invert from raw scans by hand.

I use silverfast to produce my scans, and silverfast will not remove the dust and scratches using ICE with a raw scan, so if I want to use the IR data I have to do it myself. I prefer to do it this way anyway as it gives me more control over the end result.

About the softness from Dust & Scratches, I was referring to the "Dust & Scratches" filter in Photoshop, not the ICE filter. I use the photoshop Dust & Scratches filter along with the IR scan output to quickly remove most of the problems, then I fix the spots it missed with the healing brush. The softness I referred to is what happens when you use the Dust & Scratches filter without masking it off to apply only to the actual dust and scratches.

With the ICE filter I don't usually see much softness, more like splotches surrounding the area where a piece of dust used to be. That's why I won't use the ICE filter. I end up having to hit the artifacts it produces with the healing brush leaving me doing just as much hand work as if I didn't use it in the first place, but now the spots that need attention are camouflaged and I might end up missing them and leaving something unsightly that ends up in a print.

Les Sarile · Jun 16, 2023

warden said:
VueScan does this and I assume others. Their manual is online and searchable if you want to dig in. It works with your Epson flatbed. VueScan does not use the term "ICE" for copyright reasons but I gather it's effectively the same thing and they call it "Infared Cleaning" instead. It works like ICE and you can export the infrared information independent of the image for compositing if you like, or you can just export the cleaned final RGB image just as you have been doing with the examples you showed earlier and whatever software you use.

This is not a technique I use btw. I prefer content aware healing tools to remove dust and scratches which for me are faster and easier, and avoid the misalignment issue and general image degradation brbo and others point out above that come with using ICE like tools.

Anyway here's an uncorrected image, followed by closeup showing junk on the slide, and then an IR layer which VueScan exports as a 16 bit greyscale for compositing:

View attachment 341476
View attachment 341477
View attachment 341478

Thank you for the thorough explanation with scans too!
BTW, these tools you are using is on a current version of Photoshop? Been a a few versions ago since I last used it.

Les Sarile · Jun 17, 2023

_T_ said:
Yes I’m using an epson v600. It doesn’t have the capacity to scan an entire 4x5 at once but i made my own film carrier that allows me to quickly scan both halves separately out of black card stock and some glue. I use the Photomerge function to stitch them together. Doing this requires that you obtain a raw scan from the v600, otherwise the two halves will not match exactly in color and value. Not a problem for me as I prefer to invert from raw scans by hand.

I use silverfast to produce my scans, and silverfast will not remove the dust and scratches using ICE with a raw scan, so if I want to use the IR data I have to do it myself. I prefer to do it this way anyway as it gives me more control over the end result.

About the softness from Dust & Scratches, I was referring to the "Dust & Scratches" filter in Photoshop, not the ICE filter. I use the photoshop Dust & Scratches filter along with the IR scan output to quickly remove most of the problems, then I fix the spots it missed with the healing brush. The softness I referred to is what happens when you use the Dust & Scratches filter without masking it off to apply only to the actual dust and scratches.

With the ICE filter I don't usually see much softness, more like splotches surrounding the area where a piece of dust used to be. That's why I won't use the ICE filter. I end up having to hit the artifacts it produces with the healing brush leaving me doing just as much hand work as if I didn't use it in the first place, but now the spots that need attention are camouflaged and I might end up missing them and leaving something unsightly that ends up in a print.

You're really maximizing that V600!

It seems spotting in PS has improved much since I last used it.

Bronson Dugnutt · Jun 17, 2023

Les Sarile said:
You're really maximizing that V600!

The IR channel is also useful for identifying retained silver. I've never tried, but now I'm keen to try IR scanning some B&W negatives.

Edit: My preferred 'AI' tool is PolaDSR ca. 2002. Rough automatic mask generation via 3 sliders. Appropriate settings vary widely depending on the input size.

warden · Jun 17, 2023

Les Sarile said:
Thank you for the thorough explanation with scans too!
BTW, these tools you are using is on a current version of Photoshop? Been a a few versions ago since I last used it.

You’re welcome! Yes it’s the current version of photoshop.

Adobe Ai on dust and scratch removal

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