Artifacts or Blemishes on Digital Photos Boston MA

Damage comes in all shapes and sizes — little specks of dust; scratches thin and wide, short and long; water marks or discoloration from tape; missing corners. And you can use all kinds of repairs to fix them.

Artifacts in digital photos are the little stray marks, blips, and other tiny blemishes that appear on images when those images are captured and manipulated electronically. The term artifact also sometimes applies to the dust and scratches that accumulate on printed photos and that end up in the digital version of the photo after you scan it. Most scanned images have at least a few dings.

Painting over the dirt

If your image contains only little marks on a plain background that you can easily remove with the Brush or Pencil, you may decide that painting or drawing out the spot is the answer. You're ready to make the artifacts go away. With the photo in question opened and onscreen in your favorite editing program, follow these steps:

1. Click the tool that you want to use.

You have a couple of tool options:

• Brush: Use this tool if you're painting out a small dot or a tiny scratch.

• Pencil: Choose this tool if you need a thin, precise line to get rid of the artifact in question.

2. Set the size of the brush or pencil, choosing one that's roughly the same size as the dot or scratch that you want to eliminate.

If you're dealing with a scratch, draw or paint a line that's only a tiny bit wider than the scratch itself.

3. Use the color-sampling tool — the Eyedropper — to sip up the color from the surrounding unmarred pixels.

With Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, hold down the Alt/Option key to convert the Pencil or Brush tools temporarily into an Eyedropper. This step sets the painting/drawing color so that it matches when you brush or pencil the marks out.

4. With the proper color selected, go back to the desired tool (the Brush or Pencil) and begin painting or drawing out the unwanted artifacts.

You can click to get rid of a small dot or drag to get rid of a scratch.

Smudging or blurring out the paint lines

If you painted out a mark but feel that your retouching is too visible, you can use Undo (usually Ctrl+Z for a PC or Command+Z if you're using a Mac) and start over. Alternatively, you can use the Blur or Smudge tools (set to an extremely tiny brush size) to make the edges of the painted dot or line just a bit fuzzy. This action removes any visible edge to the color that you apply to the image.

If you have any concerns about dust and scratches that you can't repair, remember this: Almost every image editing application offers the ability to select a color from within the image and then use that color for painting or drawing so that you can brush or pencil out tiny blemishes. You can use the tools involved simply — this sort of repair is easily within the grasp of beginning users.