Paint over a speck, and it is gone. You brush over the dust on your photo; the app finds a matching patch in the same frame and lays it over.
Open De-dust, paint, check the list. The brush paints on the photo you have open; the panel holds its size and the list.
Pick up the brush. Click the De-dust key in the toolbar, or choose Remove Dust & Scratches in the View menu.
Paint over the speck. The pointer becomes the brush's circle. [ and ] make it smaller or bigger, four pixels a press.
Check the list. Each stroke gets a number on your photo and a row in the panel; the bin on its row takes it off.
The patch comes from your own photo. Paint over what the scan caught: the patch that covers it is taken from the same frame, so it carries the same grain, under the same light.
Every stroke stays yours to undo. Each correction is numbered on the photo and listed beside it, with the dust it covered.
Every patch comes from your photo. The brush copies the closest matching patch from your own frame, and the corrections list flags a patch worth a second look.
Your scan stays as it was. The corrections live beside the file and reach your export.
One negative, its own corrections. They stay with the frame they were painted on, while pasted settings and presets carry your look: dust belongs to this frame.
Dust, the brush and your scan file. The short answers first, then the detail.
Your brush stroke finds it: you paint over the speck, and the app covers exactly that place. A frame you leave unpainted comes out as it was.
With a classical search, on the GPU where there is one: it compares the surroundings of your stroke with other places nearby in the same photo, and copies the one that matches best. Every pixel of the patch comes from your own photo.
Your scan file stays as it was. A correction lives beside it, reaches your export, and comes off the moment you remove its row.
Pasted settings and presets carry your look; corrections stay with the negative they were painted on. Dust belongs to one negative, and pasted it would paint dust onto another photo.
Hold Space: the pointer becomes a hand, and dragging moves the photo instead of painting.
Click the same toolbar key, now Leave De-dust, or choose Done Correcting in the View menu. Your corrections stay.
See all sixteen conversions, real photographs converted in Open Negative Initiative, each with its raw scan.
From your scan to your export. One page per feature.
Add your folder, prepare the roll once, export. Free, and nothing else to install.
Snow night. Kodak Gold, converted in Open Negative Initiative.
Know the defect, and you know how to paint it. A speck on the film, a line along the strip: each one shows on your scan in its own way, and each one asks for its own stroke.
A speck sitting on a negative blocks the light that would have passed there. The scan reads it as dense film, and once inverted, dense becomes bright: dust and hair show on your photo as white spots and pale threads, sharpest when they lie on the emulsion side. On a slide, read as it is, the same speck stays dark.
| Where the scratch is | What it does | On your photo | Your stroke |
|---|---|---|---|
| The base side, shiny | Scatters the light | A pale line | Along the line, just over its width |
| The emulsion side, matte | Takes image dye away | A dark or coloured line | Along the line, just over its width |
A scratch on the shiny base side scatters light, and on a negative it prints as a pale line. A scratch through the emulsion takes image dye away with it, and prints as a dark or coloured line. Both are paths along the film: drag the brush along the line in one stroke, at a size just over its width.
| Light behind the film | Dust | Shallow scratches |
|---|---|---|
| Diffuse, like a light panel | A softened shadow | Light wraps around them, and many fade |
| Hard and focused | A crisp shadow | Every one rendered crisp |
A diffuse light behind the film, like the light panel of a camera scan, wraps around shallow scratches and softens the shadow of dust. A hard, focused light renders every one of them crisp. If a roll comes out heavy with defects, a more diffuse light on the next scan saves you strokes.
| When | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Between scans | Keep the strips in archival sleeves, and handle them by their edges | Fingers and open air leave prints and dust on the film |
| Just before the scan | Blow each strip with a rubber bulb, then sweep it with an anti-static brush | Loose dust comes off, and less static draws more back |
| At the scanner | Clean the holder, and the glass or panel under the film | A speck there lands on every frame of the roll |
| After the scan | Paint what still shows | The brush covers exactly the place you paint |
Handle the strips by their edges, and keep them in archival sleeves between scans. Just before scanning, blow each strip with a rubber bulb and sweep it with an anti-static brush, then clean the holder and the glass or panel under it: a speck there lands on every frame of the roll. What still shows, you paint.
Zoom in with Zoom In in the View menu (⌘+ on a Mac, Ctrl and + on Windows), hold Space to move around the photo, and bring the brush just over the speck with [ and ]. A brush that covers only the defect leaves the most of your own picture around it, and gives the search a clean ring to match.
| Step | What the app does |
|---|---|
| Search | Tries many shifts around your stroke, each scored by how well its ring matches the ring around the stroke |
| Copy | Lays the best place over the stroke |
| Tone | Evens the patch out with a gentle gradient, so it sits in the light of the spot |
| Edge | Softens the seam into the photo around it |
| No real match | Lays a plain shifted tile, and puts a question mark on its row |
Around your stroke, the app tries many shifts and scores each by how well the ring around the stroke matches the same ring at that shift. The search runs on the GPU where there is one, and on the processor otherwise. The winner is copied over the stroke, its tone evened out by a gentle gradient so it sits in the light of the spot, and its edge is softened.
Where nothing nearby is a real structural match, the patch is a plain shifted tile, and a question mark on its row tells you to take a second look.
| What | Where it stays |
|---|---|
| Brush Size | With you, from photo to photo, from 4 to 120 px |
| Each stroke | At the size it was painted with |
| Each correction | Beside your scan file: numbered on the photo, listed in the panel |
| Your export | Carries every patch |
| Pasted settings and presets | Carry your look, never the corrections |
Brush Size runs from 4 to 120 pixels of your file and starts at 12. It follows you from photo to photo, and each stroke keeps the size it was painted with.
Each row shows the dust under its patch, to remember what the corrected photo no longer shows. While a patch is being made, its row reads Generating…, and each patch appears on your photo as soon as it is ready.