Best Photoshop spot removal options for stacking?
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Best Photoshop spot removal options for stacking?
I am making a Photoshop action to remove spots caused by sensor dust prior to stacking. I'll open the RAW file as a .tif and then use the spot healing brush to remove all dust spots and hot pixels. There are three options: "context aware", "create texture", and "proximity match". All sound appealing. Does anyone have a recommendation for which method works best when stacking? Maybe creating textures would fool the stacking software when this is done in regions that are not in focus on the original picture?
Asha, yes, but it is far more tedious and can't be automated. A hot pixel shows up on a stacked image as a curving dotted line (sometimes with a cloud of blur around it). The curve depends on the alignment of the images, the number of images used, the spacing between them, and the exact wiggly path of the Stackshot, so it is different on every stack. But the hot pixels and dust are in exactly the same spot on each original frame, so an action can automatically eliminate all of them with no effort on my part. I just apply the action to all the images in a folder and then stack clean images.
Thanks for the additional explanation! I am not sure which version of PS you have. I'm using PS CC 2015, and there are 5 healing tools available. I tried it out, and I think the most promising is the Spot Healing Brush with Content Aware selected.
Create Texture created a dithered effect that I think would interfere with your stack.
Proximity Match sampled a nearby area, which might be hit or miss. There didn't appear to be a threshold for the sample distance, but there is a Diffusion slider which appears to soften the healing brush area.
I'd love to see how it works out for you!
Create Texture created a dithered effect that I think would interfere with your stack.
Proximity Match sampled a nearby area, which might be hit or miss. There didn't appear to be a threshold for the sample distance, but there is a Diffusion slider which appears to soften the healing brush area.
I'd love to see how it works out for you!
Some cameras (modern Canon DSLRs for sure) have an option to map dust and authomatically remove it (not sure if it can do it to hot pixels too). You need to select the option and take a picture of an uniform defocussed subject (recommended to do it with the same opticts/aperture you plan to shot)
Pau
Pau, yes, but unfortunately I have an old Nikon D90 which, as far as I know, does not have this feature. But it is not that difficult to do it in Photoshop, and Photoshop's tools may be more complex and effective than the camera's.
Asha, I also have been finding that the Content-aware Spot Healing brush does the best job.
Asha, I also have been finding that the Content-aware Spot Healing brush does the best job.
Lou,
Your Nikon D90 will indeed let you make a dust-off reference image. See page 206 in the D90 manual.
Then you shoot raw, and process your .nef files through Nikon NX-D software. This software is free, and batch processing is reasonably fast.
If you happen to have Nikon Capture NX 2 conversion software, that will work also. This is my tool of choice, but I wouldn't recommend it if you don't already have it. It costs over $100, and Nikon no longer supports it--though they still seem to sell it. It has a very nice retouching tool (lacking in the free NX-D software) that I use to touch up things like hot pixels prior to stacking.
--Chris
Your Nikon D90 will indeed let you make a dust-off reference image. See page 206 in the D90 manual.
Then you shoot raw, and process your .nef files through Nikon NX-D software. This software is free, and batch processing is reasonably fast.
If you happen to have Nikon Capture NX 2 conversion software, that will work also. This is my tool of choice, but I wouldn't recommend it if you don't already have it. It costs over $100, and Nikon no longer supports it--though they still seem to sell it. It has a very nice retouching tool (lacking in the free NX-D software) that I use to touch up things like hot pixels prior to stacking.
--Chris
Lou, I think it gets them, or at least some of them, though I've not seen documentation to that effect. I was probably too brief in that comment, but was trying to avoid taking your thread down a tangent that probably won't be productive for you. I might more accurately have written: "It has a very nice retouching tool. . .that I use to touch up hot pixels and dust that were not present in my dust-off reference photo."Lou Jost wrote:You mention that you still use software to fix hot pixels manually. Does the automatic software not treat hot pixels?
But that would have invited an explanation of why my dust-off reference photos are generally out of date. In anticipation of that, here goes: Getting a fresh one is an interruption in my workflow. The Bratcam looks to my Nikon bodies like a "non-CPU" lens, and Nikon, for whatever reason, only permits the acquisition of dust-off reference photos with a "CPU" lens. I could, of course, remove the clamps that hold the camera firmly in place, then dismount the camera, put a CPU lens on it, take the dust-off reference image, and reverse the process. But this is an annoyance with a workflow in which I normally touch the camera only twice in a day--once to turn it on, and once to turn it off.
I could add a so-called CPU to the Bratcam--shouldn't be difficult. But so far, my workaround has been to manually retouch one raw image in Nikon Capture NX 2, save this work as "saved settings," and apply those settings to subsequent images via batch process. If additional dust gets on the sensor, just add those retouches to the saved settings. Then when I clean the sensor, delete these settings and start over. An advantage to this is that I can use these settings on jpeg originals as well as raw files. I usually shoot both, but transmit only jpegs via wifi from the capture computer in the basement to the post-processing computer in my second-floor office. I retrieve the raw files--which take much longer to transfer--only if needed.
This is a decent workflow if one already has Capture NX 2. But as it costs money, has a learning curve, was widely disliked, and is no longer supported by Nikon, I can't recommend that anyone adopt it now. Capture NXD is supposed to be the replacement, but lacks the all-important retouch tool (and a great deal else, though it makes very nice conversions).
--Chris
Chris, thanks for the additional details. I've just now downloaded Nikon NX-D. It looks like it is mostly mimicking Photoshop functions. Besides the dust correction, is there anything that this does better than Photoshop? Since Photoshop is an intrinsic part of my workflow, I'm a bit wary of adding this mostly redundant program.
Lou,
I agree that the functions that mimic Photoshop are best done in Photoshop. Better if Nikon had left them out and done only the things best done in a good raw converter. Most of us are going to use a pixel editor like Photoshop later.
NX-D does do extremely good raw conversions. Here, a discussion of history may be useful. Ten years ago I bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D200. Naturally, at that time I looked into raw conversion. Back then, Nikon's conversion software arguably did a better job on Nikon raw files than any other software. Some said this was due to Nikon's refusal to share some details about their raw format. Others said it was because Nikon refused to disclose how they processed jpegs, which form a standard on how we expect our processed raw files to look.
The Nikon software was expensive and had a clumsy, unintuitive interface, but since it produced the best results, I went with it. Versions have come and gone--mostly they've replaced one clumsy, unintuitive interface with another just as bad, but with all the cheese moved around. I doubt anyone has ever loved this software, but it has never failed to produce top-quality raw conversions.
Reportedly, over the last decade, other converters have gotten much better at handling Nikon files. So if Nikon software has any edge left in this regard, it's surely gotten thin. Since I have something that works for me, I keep using it. But recommending it is another thing entirely.
One thing that keeps me from using Adobe Camera Raw is that newer cameras are not supported in Photoshop CS6, which is what I use. I plan to hold out against paying a monthly utility bill to Adobe for as long as I can, so at the moment, there is no creative cloud over my head. DxO Optics Pro and Capture One Pro each look interesting, but do lots of things I don't care about, and are expensive.
Also, two or three years ago, I did experiment with using ACR to batch process about 600 images for a stack. I was horrified to see that it wanted to open all of them at once, rather than do them sequentially. I had to do a hard shutdown on the computer to stop the monster. A bit of Internet reading seemed to indicate that for sequential batch raw conversion, one needed to invoke ACR in Lightroom. Having earlier tried Lightroom and found it unsuited for what I do, I stopped the experiment.
One thing that Nikon Capture NX 2 did better than Photoshop was correction for chromatic aberration. Interestingly, this worked very well for non-Nikon lenses, and even jpegs shot on a Canon body. So this wasn't due to any insider knowledge--more likely, some programmer simply had good insight into dealing with CA. Has this insight made it into Nikon Capture NXD? I think so, but am not certain. The function is there, but its look and feel are different, and I've done only minimal testing, as I mostly still use Capture NX 2. Capture NX 2 was a collaboration between Nikon and Nik Software. The latter was then bought by Google, and licensing of its intellectual property to Nikon was discontinued, with NXD being the result. Whether the insight about CA belonged to Nikon or Nik is unclear.
--Chris
edited typo
I agree that the functions that mimic Photoshop are best done in Photoshop. Better if Nikon had left them out and done only the things best done in a good raw converter. Most of us are going to use a pixel editor like Photoshop later.
NX-D does do extremely good raw conversions. Here, a discussion of history may be useful. Ten years ago I bought my first DSLR, a Nikon D200. Naturally, at that time I looked into raw conversion. Back then, Nikon's conversion software arguably did a better job on Nikon raw files than any other software. Some said this was due to Nikon's refusal to share some details about their raw format. Others said it was because Nikon refused to disclose how they processed jpegs, which form a standard on how we expect our processed raw files to look.
The Nikon software was expensive and had a clumsy, unintuitive interface, but since it produced the best results, I went with it. Versions have come and gone--mostly they've replaced one clumsy, unintuitive interface with another just as bad, but with all the cheese moved around. I doubt anyone has ever loved this software, but it has never failed to produce top-quality raw conversions.
Reportedly, over the last decade, other converters have gotten much better at handling Nikon files. So if Nikon software has any edge left in this regard, it's surely gotten thin. Since I have something that works for me, I keep using it. But recommending it is another thing entirely.
One thing that keeps me from using Adobe Camera Raw is that newer cameras are not supported in Photoshop CS6, which is what I use. I plan to hold out against paying a monthly utility bill to Adobe for as long as I can, so at the moment, there is no creative cloud over my head. DxO Optics Pro and Capture One Pro each look interesting, but do lots of things I don't care about, and are expensive.
Also, two or three years ago, I did experiment with using ACR to batch process about 600 images for a stack. I was horrified to see that it wanted to open all of them at once, rather than do them sequentially. I had to do a hard shutdown on the computer to stop the monster. A bit of Internet reading seemed to indicate that for sequential batch raw conversion, one needed to invoke ACR in Lightroom. Having earlier tried Lightroom and found it unsuited for what I do, I stopped the experiment.
One thing that Nikon Capture NX 2 did better than Photoshop was correction for chromatic aberration. Interestingly, this worked very well for non-Nikon lenses, and even jpegs shot on a Canon body. So this wasn't due to any insider knowledge--more likely, some programmer simply had good insight into dealing with CA. Has this insight made it into Nikon Capture NXD? I think so, but am not certain. The function is there, but its look and feel are different, and I've done only minimal testing, as I mostly still use Capture NX 2. Capture NX 2 was a collaboration between Nikon and Nik Software. The latter was then bought by Google, and licensing of its intellectual property to Nikon was discontinued, with NXD being the result. Whether the insight about CA belonged to Nikon or Nik is unclear.
--Chris
edited typo
Last edited by Chris S. on Sun Jan 24, 2016 9:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Thanks for the very interesting history. I had noticed that my out-of-camera Nikon jpegs had better colors than the jpegs produced by ACR version CS3. I now do pay that monthly bill to Adobe for CS6 and I haven't checked to see if those old jpgs would look better if converted in CS6. I'll have to check. I share your philosophy that if it is done better in Nikon's software than in CS6, it would be worth complicating my life with Nikon's software.
About your fear that your version of Photoshop will not be updated for new cameras, I wonder if that is really a problem. I used to run CS3 for a very long time and I could always add new RAW converters. Don't remember exactly how. I also recall that in a pinch you can always use Adobe's free DNG converter and then work in DNG.
About opening multiple files at once when batch processing in Photoshop, that happened to me this morning when testing my dust removal action, but I think it was just because I forgot to include a "close file" command in my action, so open files just kept piling up.
About your fear that your version of Photoshop will not be updated for new cameras, I wonder if that is really a problem. I used to run CS3 for a very long time and I could always add new RAW converters. Don't remember exactly how. I also recall that in a pinch you can always use Adobe's free DNG converter and then work in DNG.
About opening multiple files at once when batch processing in Photoshop, that happened to me this morning when testing my dust removal action, but I think it was just because I forgot to include a "close file" command in my action, so open files just kept piling up.
Lou,
If you like the way your Nikon jpegs look, you'll find it very easy to get that look out of Nikon NXD software. It's essentially the default.
--Chris
If you like the way your Nikon jpegs look, you'll find it very easy to get that look out of Nikon NXD software. It's essentially the default.
I suspect you meant CC 15.1 (creative Cloud, now in release 2015.1), not CS6? CS6 is what I have.Lou Jost wrote:I now do pay that monthly bill to Adobe for CS6. . .
In June of 2015, Adobe released Adobe Camera Raw 9.11, along with an announcement that this would be the last ACR update for CS6 Photoshop and Lightroom. This wasn't a surprise--it was in accord with Adobe's long-before announced plans. At present, CC subscribers have access to ACR 9.3.1; we can expect this version to keep incrementing, while CS6 users will remain at 9.1.1.About your fear that your version of Photoshop will not be updated for new cameras, I wonder if that is really a problem. I used to run CS3 for a very long time and I could always add new RAW converters.
Yes. But as long as a Nikon product makes good conversions, I'll likely continue to use it. The clumsy interface isn't really a problem after one gets used to it.I also recall that in a pinch you can always use Adobe's free DNG converter and then work in DNG.
I've had that happen too, for exactly the same reason. But the problem I described was quite different and was, if I recall, an ACR batch problem. Memory is sketchy on this, but I believe that ACR was intended by design to open up all batched images, rather than open one, convert it, and open another. That to get sequential batch functionality one needed to call ACR from Lightroom.About opening multiple files at once when batch processing in Photoshop, that happened to me this morning when testing my dust removal action, but I think it was just because I forgot to include a "close file" command in my action, so open files just kept piling up.
--Chris
Last edited by Chris S. on Mon Jan 25, 2016 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Chris, I have recently discovered a new-ish program for Mac OS (not sure if that is what you use). It is called Affinity Photo. I am a long time user of Photoshop, and AP is the best replacement I've seen since I started looking for one when the Adobe CC was introduced. It has RAW capability, but they don't yet have a Digital Assets Management (DAM) program like Lightroom. I don't know what the status is of camera support, either, but I know it definitely will take DNGs. The developers are passionate, and have a great community forum. Also, it is only $50, and no subscription neededChris S. wrote:
One thing that keeps me from using Adobe Camera Raw is that newer cameras are not supported in Photoshop CS6, which is what I use. I plan to hold out against paying a monthly utility bill to Adobe for as long as I can, so at the moment, there is no creative cloud over my head. DxO Optics Pro and Capture One Pro each look interesting, but do lots of things I don't care about, and are expensive.
Interesting. I really shy away from LR because it is really unintuitive for me. I've done large batches in ACR quite easily in CS6. I haven't tried it yet in CC 2015, though. In fact, the batch processing in CS6 ACR is faster than DxO Optics Pro, which is my Lightroom equivalent.Chris S. wrote: Also, two or three years ago, I did experiment with using ACR to batch process about 600 images for a stack. I was horrified to see that it wanted to open all of them at once, rather than do them sequentially. I had to do a hard shutdown on the computer to stop the monster. A bit of Internet reading seemed to indicate that for sequential batch raw conversion, one needed to invoke ACR in Lightroom. Having earlier tried Lightroom and found it unsuited for what I do, I stopped the experiment.
I also think Adobe is updating CS6 ACR with new cameras. I occasionally receive updates through the CC utility. No new features are added, just the camera profiles.
Thanks, Asha. Affinity Photo sounds like excellent software, and I devoutly wish it wide acceptance. Adobe’s coercing users into eternal-payment bondage opened up a hole that I hope competitors will drive trucks through. Affinity seems to be just such a truck, and my hat is off to them. While I quite like Photoshop, I think Adobe is engaging in monopolistic behavior (outlawed in the U.S. under the Sherman Act of 1890), and welcome good software that weakens its hedgemony.Asha wrote:. . . a new-ish program for Mac OS (not sure if that is what you use). It is called Affinity Photo.
But I’m a PC user, and about as died-in-the-wool investment in this platform as it’s possible to be. I enjoy building and repairing PCs, swapping parts out, etc. The Mac platform has its virtues, but DIY-friendliness is not among them.
That certainly wouldn’t bother me, as the DAM programs I’ve dabbled with seem unsuited to what I do. In terms of the frustration I’ve had with them, I consider them aptly named. However, I can well understand how they would work for a photographer who doesn’t do 1,500 image stacks, let alone dozens of these on the same subject, with small changes between; or who doesn’t spend a week camped in some wilderness, experimenting and waiting for the light toward one shot; or who doesn’t have images spread across more hard drives than he can count, which may be promiscuously mounted in hot-swap bays in various computers.Asha wrote:. . . they don't yet have a Digital Assets Management (DAM) program like Lightroom.
Makes sense. I avoid LR because it combines a raw converter I find inferior to Nikon’s, a pixel editor inferior to Photoshop, and a DAM capability whose mismatch to my needs I’ve described. But I could see it being very useful for, say, a wedding or travel photographer.Asha wrote:I really shy away from LR because it is really unintuitive for me. I've done large batches in ACR quite easily in CS6.
Did ACR first open all the images, then process them, then close them? Or did it open, process, and close each image one by one?Asha wrote:I've done large batches in ACR quite easily in CS6.
If the latter, I missed learning how to accomplish it in my brief experiments and longer Google searches. But can’t claim real familiarity with ACR. And from what I’ve seen, neither do I much want —it’s something I’ve tried just a bit, several times. It’s quite possible that a more efficient batch mode exists, which I did not find. (This said, I did spend some time searching Google for a workaround.)
Please reread my earlier post. Adobe did continue updates to CS6 ACR until last June. At that point, they stopped doing so, and announced that this update was the last. At present, CC15 is a few minor updates ahead of CS6. This gulf will only grow wider.Asha wrote:I also think Adobe is updating CS6 ACR with new cameras.
Cheers,
--Chris