Erasing dust spots

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Level 1

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Erasing dust spots

besides the spot and patch tool, is there any other way to remove dust spots from images in Aperture (or iPhoto)? i recall seeing a demo of Nikon's Capture NX, and that program had a feature that let you shoot an image of a white background, and then you could use that image to identify where dust spots were and use that to remove the dust spots from images.

i have not found anything in Aperture that does this, and the spot and patch tool is a little harder to use than the touch up tool in iPhoto.

have some nice shots of a sunrise on mountain, but unknown to me at the time, i had a big dust spot right in the middle of the mountain. using the touchup tool in iPhoto just results in the nice detail of the mountain getting all fuzzy.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.10), Aperture 1.5.4

Posted on Aug 9, 2007 6:36 AM

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Answer 1

tidysteve

Level 4

2,975 points

Aug 9, 2007 6:40 AM in response to dab_maryland

at this time, no, the spot and patch tool is the only dust removal in aperture ... maybe down the road ... but who knows ...

i find that spot and patch works well for small spots or a few spots ... if for some reason i got my sensor dirty and didnt clean it, i have to round-trip to photoshop ...

you can set NX to be your exteranl editor and round-trip your trouble images to there while still maintaining the file in your aperture library ...

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Answer 2

dab_maryland Author

Level 1

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Aug 9, 2007 7:00 AM in response to dab_maryland

thanks, that's what i was afraid of.

spent extra $ to get Aperture, thinking it would be more useful than iPhoto, and figured Aperture would be as useful as Capture NX from Nikon. if i had known all this, i would have thought twice about spending extra $ for Aperture.

don't have photoshop, no idea how to use it.

and the kicker is, by the time i discovered i had a huge dust spot on my CCD, and could get a white background to shoot, the dust spot had moved/disappeared.

guess my nice shot of the Tetons at sunrise will have a little blemish.

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Answer 3

Aug 9, 2007 7:58 AM in response to dab_maryland

Are you sure this was a dust spot and not a lens flare? Was it only seen on that shot of the sunrise?

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Answer 4

dab_maryland Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 13, 2007 10:04 AM in response to Keith Barkley

it was a dust spot in the CCD, changed lenses, and took other photos before and after, stupid spot is on all of them, but is more prominent on the sunrise photos, as i had set the camera on aperature priority, and was shooting at about f/16.

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