Remove specks from image
Remove specks from image
Can anyone recommend a tool for removing specks from old scanned photos and/or horizontal scan lines from bad digital camera ?
Re: Remove specks from image
Probably GIMP is your best bet. There's actually a "despeckle" plugin for it, but if you want to get hands on, there are some photoshop-like tools in the program to help clean that up.humpty wrote:Can anyone recommend a tool for removing specks from old scanned photos and/or horizontal scan lines from bad digital camera ?
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portafreeuser
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 9:16 pm
Re: Remove specks from image
NeatImage has a free demo that is pretty much fully functional except it writes it's results to high-quality JPEG instead of to BMP or PNG. But the results usually still look better than the original file if you use it properly.
It's not a de-speckler but it is a de-noiser.
The way it works is you load up an image file that is grainy and select a square portion of the image that is mostly just noise if possible. The program can select a region automatically as well. Then you click a button and it analyses the noise and creates an adjustable filter to get rid of the noise without affecting the rest of the image so much. Then you go to the next tab of settings where you can adjust the filter settings to be more precise. There you can select which type of noise you want filtered and by how much. Also you can select if you want it to smooth the results or work with low frequency noise. Also you can specify image sharpening options to make it look less blurry after the filtering. And you can select how much filtering happens for each of the main colors used to create the picture. Every time you make an adjustment, the preview of the image changes so you can see if it's working well or not before you commit to the changes. The last step is to render the output file. You can also have it do this automatically after each adjustment.
What I usually do is save the results of NeatImage, and then convert it PNG. It's bad to keep saving and editing JPEG's because they keep losing information and slowly degrade. This doesn't happen with PNG or BMP or TIFF. Then after I've saved as PNG, I load the image into PhotoFiltre (freeware) and use the blur and smear tools on specks to get rid of them. First I select the speck and delete it so that there is only a white spot where it used to be. Next I use the smear tool. The smear tool seems to work best but you need to adjust the opacity of it and the diameter of it. The opacity affects how far it smears the colours and how well it blends them. I find that a high value of about 90% works best and I use a really small diameter. Afterwards, I use the blur tool if needed on any rough edges. Also you can use the stamp tool to clone a part of the image and paint with it. That works really well too. The basic idea of these techniques is to use colours from surrounding the speck to fill in the speck. Since you can smear, you can fill in the speck in a way that doesn't clash with the "woodgrain" or natural pattern of the image. You kind of paint with it. Same with the stamp tool.
I have been able to use NeatImage to get rid of wrinkles on people's faces. And I've been able to use PhotoFiltre to get rid of tattoos and piercings on people. And specks too. Sometimes you can even get rid of overlayed text on a background if you are clever with it. It takes some practice but it's fun to learn.
It's not a de-speckler but it is a de-noiser.
The way it works is you load up an image file that is grainy and select a square portion of the image that is mostly just noise if possible. The program can select a region automatically as well. Then you click a button and it analyses the noise and creates an adjustable filter to get rid of the noise without affecting the rest of the image so much. Then you go to the next tab of settings where you can adjust the filter settings to be more precise. There you can select which type of noise you want filtered and by how much. Also you can select if you want it to smooth the results or work with low frequency noise. Also you can specify image sharpening options to make it look less blurry after the filtering. And you can select how much filtering happens for each of the main colors used to create the picture. Every time you make an adjustment, the preview of the image changes so you can see if it's working well or not before you commit to the changes. The last step is to render the output file. You can also have it do this automatically after each adjustment.
What I usually do is save the results of NeatImage, and then convert it PNG. It's bad to keep saving and editing JPEG's because they keep losing information and slowly degrade. This doesn't happen with PNG or BMP or TIFF. Then after I've saved as PNG, I load the image into PhotoFiltre (freeware) and use the blur and smear tools on specks to get rid of them. First I select the speck and delete it so that there is only a white spot where it used to be. Next I use the smear tool. The smear tool seems to work best but you need to adjust the opacity of it and the diameter of it. The opacity affects how far it smears the colours and how well it blends them. I find that a high value of about 90% works best and I use a really small diameter. Afterwards, I use the blur tool if needed on any rough edges. Also you can use the stamp tool to clone a part of the image and paint with it. That works really well too. The basic idea of these techniques is to use colours from surrounding the speck to fill in the speck. Since you can smear, you can fill in the speck in a way that doesn't clash with the "woodgrain" or natural pattern of the image. You kind of paint with it. Same with the stamp tool.
I have been able to use NeatImage to get rid of wrinkles on people's faces. And I've been able to use PhotoFiltre to get rid of tattoos and piercings on people. And specks too. Sometimes you can even get rid of overlayed text on a background if you are clever with it. It takes some practice but it's fun to learn.