Best tool for editing out sensor dust spots from photos

[trut_maluglist]

I've got some photos I took when the sensor in my D80 had a bunch of dust on it. So there are some "halo" effects in the non-busy areas such as a bright blue sky. I've tried using the Lasso tool in Photoshop to cover it up and with some photos, it works pretty good. But I was wondering if anyone knows of a better tool. Problem when I use the Lasso tool is if I don't copy and paste something that's precisely the same shade of blue, then it only makes it worse. And I have to "undo". I've been told the more current versions of Photoshop have a tool with which you select a certain area and it simply blends into the surrounding shades/colors. However, all I've got is Photoshop 5.0 LE. Perhaps this version of Photoshop has a tool that will work better than the Lasso. I spoke with Nikon and was told I can use the dust off reference photos I've taken in conjunction with their Nikon Capture NX2 software. I'm uneasy about spending $180 on that just to edit a few photos and I can't be 100% certain that the dust didn't move around between the time I took the photos and the time I took the dust off reference photos.

Any good minds out there that give me some tips?

Thanks!

[dougj]

I don't know if your version of PS has the healing tool (looks like a band aid), it works fairly well. The clone tool is a good fall back this type of work as well. If it's dust on the sensor, it shouldn't move around. You can check by taking a few shots of a light colored wall or the sky at ~f/22 over the course of a couple of days. If it's dust, you can try cleaning the sensor with a couple of blasts of air with a Rocket blower or other similar hand squeeze blower. I don't know the procedure to put your camera in sensor clean mode.

FWIW, I blow off the sensor a few times a year, and do a wet cleaning only when blowing doesn't work, which is not too often.

[trut_maluglist]

I don't know if your version of PS has the healing tool (looks like a band aid), it works fairly well. The clone tool is a good fall back this type of work as well. If it's dust on the sensor, it shouldn't move around. You can check by taking a few shots of a light colored wall or the sky at ~f/22 over the course of a couple of days. If it's dust, you can try cleaning the sensor with a couple of blasts of air with a Rocket blower or other similar hand squeeze blower. I don't know the procedure to put your camera in sensor clean mode.

FWIW, I blow off the sensor a few times a year, and do a wet cleaning only when blowing doesn't work, which is not too often.

I've since had it professionally cleaned. Usually a few blasts from a hurricane blower takes care of any dust. But for some reason, the dust that accumulated on there this time wouldn't come off with the hurricane blower.

My question doesn't pertain so much to cleaning the sensor, but how to salvage photos that have been affected by being taken when the sensor was dirty.

Does the healing tool have an official name? I don't see anything that looks like a band aid in my tool box on Photoshop. Each time I click on one of the tool boxes, the option tab comes up in the right.

Left column is Marquee, Lasso, Airbrush, Eraser, Rubber Stamp, Focus Tool, Line Tool, Paint Tool, Bucket
Right column is Move Tool, Magic Wand, PaintBrush, Pencil, Smudge Tool, Toning Tool, Gradient Tool, Eyedropper, Gradient

I've used Lasso on a few photos, and it's worked good on some. But unless the shades of blue sky are precisely the same, it becomes more visible than the original effects from the spotting.

Do any of these sound like the same thing you're using?

[dougj]

Here are the tools - Healing Brush Tool and Clone Stamp Tool - from the tools pallet in PS CS3, I don't know when they were introduced. A Wikipedia article states the rubber stamp tool may be the equivalent of the clone tool, so you could try it. If it is the same or similar, there may be a few settings that will control the size, opacity and flow of the cloned/stamped area. In later versions of PS, the area to be cloned from is identified via the ALT key and a left click of the mouse button in the desired area.

[snapshooter87]

I've had better success with another editor that is more flexible and user friendly, and I do have more recent versions of both PhotoShop and Corel PSP X2. They're both great but you might want to take a look at PhotoFiltre. It has both a Free and Commercial version but the free version has everything but Layers and .8bf filters capability. I'm not suggesting a change. It's just faster and easier to correct your problem and you may find it more convenient in handling all the basics.
< http://photofiltre.free.fr/download_en.htm >
The English version is the very top item on the DOWNLOADS page and there's a significant number of additional language versions directly below.
The Clone tool has a Rubber Stamp icon on the editor's right border. TheRadius, feathering or edge/sharp controls are all right there and integrated when you select the rubber stamp.

By the way. I recently had the same experience after a trip to Texas and was sure it was the sensor. I checked it with high magnification but it was perfectly clean. Never occurred to me to check my lenses as I always clean them thoroughly, but that's what it was. It left numerous varied size circular spots in many files. Just a thought, in case you might have encountered the same problem between lens cleanings.