Removing vertical scratch mark in Silverfast 8

Here's the photo in questions:



You can see the scanner makes a blue vertical line on the left side of the image. Anyone know how to remove the vertical scratch line with the software?

Is the scratch on the negative or is it being caused by the scanner? Also, what kind of scanner are we talking about?

It could be that you need to clean the scan bed. Sometimes a particle of dust will get stuck on the calibration area of a flatbed scanner and it will cause an issue that looks like this.

If the scratch is on the negative you could try to target it with iSRD but your mileage may vary.

The easiest way is to fix it in photoshop but I understand that many people don’t want to go that route.

I have a Plustek 8200i SE and the scratch is on the film actually. I've tried with iSRD but had no luck. How would you fix it in PS?

There is no one technique that will work best in 100% of cases.

I would start with content aware fill because it is the easiest. Draw a selection around the scratch, very close to but not touching the scratch and apply a content aware fill.

If that doesn’t work I would try the spot healing brush. The brush should be as small as possible while still covering the scratch.

Sometimes the spot healing brush has trouble on transitions from one area of color to another. In those places you might have to use the healing brush and select a similar area to the part you’re trying to heal and line the selection up with the transition.

You might need to use some combination of any or all of these but they will definitely take care of it.

Long straight scratches that cross over multiple color boundaries are some of the most difficult types of scratches to fix but even they are no big deal in photoshop. Just gotta keep a careful eye on the grain structure of the surrounding area to make sure your healing or whatever is seamless with the rest of the image. Any areas where the healed grain you just invented is too contrasty or saturated will stand out just as much as the scratch did in the first place.

YoIaMoNwater said:

How would you fix it in PS?

Click to expand...

Heal it out, bit by bit. Tedious, and it'll still be visible if you know what to look for and looking at high magnification, but it'll not be very apparent anymore.

Thank you for the advices from both of you, I've been playing around with a bit in PS and it seems like the spot healing brush is working.