Dust & Scratches
In the app, the beside the Dust & Scratches block says:
Paint over a defect; the tool duplicates a matching patch of the same photo over it.
Paint over a defect and the tool duplicates a matching patch of the same photo over it. Being in this panel arms the brush; there is nothing else to switch on.
Brush size
Sets the diameter, in pixels, of the stroke you paint over a dust speck or scratch. The tool finds a matching patch nearby and blends it in, matching exposure at the seam.
More about Brush size
In the Correction panel, which the toolbar opens and closes with one key rather than a tab. Inside the Dust & Scratches block.
The block’s own opens Correction › Dust & Scratches in this manual.
- Range
- 4 px to 120 px as shown (4 to 120 stored)
- At rest
- 12 px
- Double-click returns
- 12 px
- Right end
- 120 px shown
- Carried by a preset
- Nothing to carry: it is a preference of yours (brushRadius), not a setting of the photo, and it is not written to the sidecar.
- Runs from 4 to 120 pixels, because the search works inside an 800 pixel tile.
- The correction is spliced in before any setting is applied, so every gain, curve and tone treats patched pixels like the rest.
- A crop widened or rotated after the stroke moves the frame under it, and the correction does not survive it.
- The brush size is a preference, not written to the sidecar or a preset; the strokes themselves are facts about the negative.
- Correct after cropping and straightening, never before, since the strokes live on the frame you see.
Corrections
- Correction 1
- Correction 2
- Correction 3
One row per stroke painted, in order, named by the number its marker carries on the photo. The list appears only once something has been painted.
More about Corrections
In the Correction panel, which the toolbar opens and closes with one key rather than a tab. Inside the Dust & Scratches block. It appears only once a defect has been painted over.
The block’s own opens Correction › Dust & Scratches in this manual.
- Carried by a preset
- Never: a specific defect on THIS negative: pasting one paints someone else's dust onto a different photograph.
- A spinner and "Generating…" show while the patch is built, which happens once per stroke and again only if the stroke changes.
- A warning triangle means the search found no good match nearby; the tooltip explains the patch is a plain shifted tile instead.
- The key at the end of a row removes only that correction; there is no reset, since removing all would be a decision about each.
- The strokes are stored in the photo's sidecar; a preset or paste of settings never carries them to another photo.
- A row's number in the list matches its marker on the photo, the way to find a stroke.
How every slider works
How every slider in the app works
- Drag anywhere on the row: the value moves by how far your hand travelled, it does not jump to where you clicked. That is what makes a fine adjustment possible without aiming.
- Hold ⌥ while dragging and the travel is divided by five.
- Scroll sideways on the trackpad over a slider to nudge it.
- Double-click to return to the base value, which is not always the resting one: on Sharpening amount it is zero, the one gesture that switches the stage off.
- Keyboard: once a slider has the focus, the arrow keys move it by a hundredth of its travel.
- A slider whose track is anchored puts one named value at the middle of its travel; the two halves are linear but not equal.
- A bipolar slider shows no fill: its whole track is the gradient between its two ends, because it is a balance between two hues, not a quantity.