Cloning dead pixels

Photon-hunter

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I´ve been thinking a bit....after all the reading and the dead pixels being a fact of life with the RD-1.

Please correct me if I´m wrong, my photoshop skills are still those of an eternal learner....

I assume the dead pixels appear allways in the same place...

...would it not be feasible to create a Photoshop action to clone them from the inmediate surroundings....and avoid the pain in the rear of the manual cloning avery time...? :(

Just an (maybe dumb)idea.

Erik.
 
This could work pretty well on raw files, but most raw-file conversion programs already include the capability of doing it automatically. (The Epson bundled s/w that comes with the R-D 1 is one of the few that doesn't. Adobe ACR and Raw Developer are two that do.)

On JPEG files, it's not quite so simple, because the shape and appearance of the bad pixel can vary depending on compression level. Still, I've had fairly good results with the following crude method:

-- Photograph an evenly-toned surface (dark to find "hot" pixels, light to find "dead" pixels.)

-- Adjust and, if necessary, invert your photo so the bad pixels are white on a black background.

-- Apply gaussian blur to blur the edges of the bad pixels slightly.

-- Convert this "bad pixel map" image to a channel and save it (see Photoshop instructions.)

-- Create an action that will open an image, load the channel you just created as a selection, and apply the Noise>Dust and Scratches filter to it (experiment to find out what settings work best.)

You can only do this on fresh, uncropped images; obviously, once you crop them, the bad pixels on your "map" no longer will line up in the right places.
 
DCE tools plug-in has a "hot pixel fix" that works pretty well, also for dead pixels. It compensates for Jpeg holes as well.
 
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