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!