Renewed Plea for Update of Repair Brushes

[OldRadioGuy]

Here's my normal workflow for processing digital photographs:

Shoot in Raw > Move to ACDSee Pro 4 for organization and processing > Open in PhotoLine 16.5 for final cropping, tweaking, etc. PL is great for this kind of work -- blazingly fast in 64-bit, plenty of tools for most purposes, compatibility with the popular plug-ins, actions, etc.

But PL falls way behind the others when it comes to photo repair.

I was reminded of this again when I took on a project to help my aunt get some old photographs ready for a digital scrapbook project.

I had over 100 scanned images -- b&w and color, old and new.

I began the process, opening the images from ACDSee Pro 4 to PhotoLine. For most, PL did a magnificent job. Color restoration and other challenges were no problem. Curves, layers and various tools did the job well. But when it came to cleaning up flaws such as spots and scratches, I abandoned PL in frustration. It took too long to get accurate repairs.

Instead, I opened PS Elements 9, selected the Spot Healing Brush with the Content-Aware option selected, and I was operating efficiently again. Select the appropriate size, click on a spot once, and it was replaced, blending into the background perfectly. I could move around the photograph without having to pick a selection area first. The tool did have problems making corrections near edges of another color, however. When it came to scratches, the PSE9 Healing Brush tool was no better than PL, requiring a selection area designation before starting each repair.

I then turned to PSPPX3, renewing an old acquaintance with the Blemish Fixer, which is a subset of the program's Makeover Tool. Set the size and the tool analyzes the area around the spot, one click and the repair is done, blending perfectly. With the size set correctly the tool is smart enough to know to exclude a line of a different color next to the blemish. For the scratches, I switched to the Scratch Remover tool, which computes its replacement from an analysis of areas parallel to the scratch. With the width set correctly and by selecting only short lengths, I was able to do the scratch repairs much faster than with PL's Copy Brush or PSE9's Healing Brush or Stamp Brush.

So, I wound up doing the remainder of the photo restoration work in PSPPX3, even the chores I had performed successfully with PL.

So, here's my plea again.... please update the Copy Brush and the Repairing Brush in PL 17. Make them intelligent to eliminate the step of selecting an adjacent area before the replacement is actually performed. These tools are extremely important in repairing old photographs.

Am I the only one here attempting to use PL for photo restoration work?

Bob
















viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2521

[bkh]

Maybe you should try the latest beta (see http://www.pl32.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2695#p16633, I hope that you can access it)- It has a new feature called "Remove brush" (sharing the same position in the Toolbar as the repair brush and the red eye brush). It's become one of my favourite retouching tools lately (but I don't usually restore old photographs).

Cheers

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

Hey Bob

I have some pix I want to restore but I've basically given up on them -- too painful. What you propose would make a huge difference.

I used the repair brush for a few things successfully, but I've basically given it away for the sorts of reason you've spoken of here. I've reverted to the duplicate brush where I can control stuff more. But it is not a satisfactory solution compared with the kinds of stuff you speak of in other programs and it does have limitations with the selection of a reference area.

Cheers, geoff

[OldRadioGuy]

Maybe you should try the latest beta (see http://www.pl32.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2695#p16633, I hope that you can access it)- It has a new feature called "Remove brush" (sharing the same position in the Toolbar as the repair brush and the red eye brush). It's become one of my favourite retouching tools lately (but I don't usually restore old photographs).

Cheers

Burkhard.

The Remove Brush is absolute genius! It does the work of two tools -- the tool for removing long scratches and the tool for removing spots. I tested it on a scan of an old house I have. The emulsion on the paper had thousands of tiny cracks, plus spots and long scratches.

I set the brush for what I though would be an appropriate size, clicked on a spot and it was gone, replaced with a perfect match with the surrounding background. Then I clicked on one of the cracks -- narrow but a little longer than the diameter of the spot. The crack, too, was replaced perfectly. I then tested the same size brush setting on a longer scratch. It worked, too. On a long stroke following a scratch, the Remove Brush correctly recognized a line perpendicular to the scratch and left it intact. The second perpendicular line crossed by the scratch was replaced by background, however. I undid this repair, and did two shorter strokes of the scratch, including only one perpendicular line in each. Both were recognized correctly and left intact after the two repairs.

Finally, I set the tool for a much larger size and clicked on a portion of the blown-out sky above the house in the picture. This area contained a half dozen of the random tiny cracks. The area was replaced with crack-free sky.

Absolutely remarkable! Single-click repair and two functions in one tool! A real timesaver!

Thanks, PL, for your hard work. I can't wait for this update to be released. And thanks, Burkhard, for you tip.

Bob

[greenmorpher]

Oh buggerit! There goes my excuse for not fixing up those old photos!

On other hand it looks as though it will be a pleasure.

Thanks to you, Bob and Burkhardt, for bringing this to my attention, but most of all, thanks in anticipation to the Hubers for producing it.

Cheers, geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Business & Environment Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Worsley Press
Buy "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" -- the world's ONLY scientifically based guide to type and layout, and receive a free 140 page guide to advertising for small business: "How to make great ads for (small) business: 99 real world advertising ideas to kickstart *your* business today". Amazon or http://www.worsleypress.com

[OldRadioGuy]

It has a new feature called "Remove brush" (sharing the same position in the Toolbar as the repair brush and the red eye brush). It's become one of my favourite retouching tools lately (but I don't usually restore old photographs).

Cheers

Burkhard.

Burkhard, while testing today with some color images, occasionally I misjudged the brush size and missed getting the outer portion of a spot. It might be helpful if the Remove Brush had an inner circle designating the area to be replaced. With or without though -- I love it!

Bob

[bkh]

Burkhard, while testing today with some color images, occasionally I misjudged the brush size and missed getting the outer portion of a spot. It might be helpful if the Remove Brush had an inner circle designating the area to be replaced. With or without though -- I love it!

Glad to hear that you like the new "toy", too.

As far as I remember, the recommendation is to use the Remove Brush with a hard brush - the algorithm itself seems to do an appropriate blending.

Perhaps I should also have mentioned that this tool replaces the selected area by another similar part of the image. There is some randomness involved, so if you don't like the result, it makes sense to retry (there is even a retry button in the tool settings).

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Sus]

Having tested the Remove Brush in 16,90B I must say it is a very nice tool !
However there is one shortcoming that I would like to mention:
a spot with big contrast compared to its surroundings or a spot bigger than a few pixels requires 5 to 15 left mouse button clicks before it disappears.
I would like to see the Retry option (which is useless in this case) being replaced by a click repeat number setting so that combined f.e. with the Control key it replaces the 10 clicks I need by just one click.

Generally speaking I think PL is a fantastic program to update a few pictures.
It is when attempting to process say your 500 holiday pictures that its shortcomings become a real burden : poor browser,incomplete file info etc (ref 'My own (not so) small list' of Improvements dd 30 Apr 2009 09:02).
However I am pleased to see that it is being upgraded continuously. Super !

[bkh]

Having tested the Remove Brush in 16,90B I must say it is a very nice tool !
However there is one shortcoming that I would like to mention:
a spot with big contrast compared to its surroundings or a spot bigger than a few pixels requires 5 to 15 left mouse button clicks before it disappears.
I would like to see the Retry option (which is useless in this case) being replaced by a click repeat number setting so that combined f.e. with the Control key it replaces the 10 clicks I need by just one click.

This is probably a bug in the beta, possibly the one I reported to the developers some time ago, where the repair brush used the intensity settings of a previously used brush (so that the spot becomes a bit fainter after each click). I think this has been fixed in 16.90B3 (http://www.pl32.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2729#p16822).

Cheers

Burkhard.