One of the biggest problems with scans of heritage photos, especially when you scan them yourself, is the white dust spots. You might also have scratches from wear and tear and black spots from dirty photos. One solution is to use the Spot Healing tool to get rid of the spots, but this can be tedious if you have a lot of spots. A better solution for most of the spots is my heritage action called Remove Spots. Let me show you how it works.

Open the photo called Remove-Spots-1.jpg from the Heritage Practice Photos folder in your class downloads.

Here's a tip before running the action. If you need to sharpen the image, do that first because sharpening will emphasize the spots and even cause new spots to appear. If you sharpen later, you'll end up having to run this action again to get rid of new spots. So always sharpen first. I've already sharpened this photo so you don't have to do it.

Open the Actions panel. If you don't see it, in the Menu Bar choose Window → Actions. In the Heritage Photo action set click on the first action called Remove Spots. I put it at the top because out of all these actions, this is the one I use the most. Click the Play button in the upper right corner of the panel to run the action.

The action duplicates the original layer and applies the Dust and Scratches filter, but it stops to let you adjust the amount. Leave the Threshold at 0 but change the Radius until all but a few of the larger spots disappear. For most photos a Radius of 6 is perfect, but since this is a practice photo it's a little smaller than normal so I need to also reduce the Radius a bit. I'll change it to 4. A few spots are showing, but most have disappeared.

If you use this action on a photo that's quite large, you may need to go higher than 6, but most of the time I don't change the Radius because 6 looks great.

Once you click Okay or press Enter the action finishes and leaves you with two blended layers in the Layers panel, each with a layer mask—one for white or light spots and one for dark spots. If you're unfamiliar with how to use layer masks, be sure to watch my layer mask video in the Basic Skills class.

The blend modes are the secret sauce because the top layer will only darken so it only affects the white spots and the other layer will only lighten so it only affects dark spots. This allows you to use a bigger brush and paint over larger areas.

The action automatically selects the layer for white spots first because there are usually more white spots, and it gives you white for the Foreground Color Chip because black on a mask hides the effect. But if you paint with white it reveals the Dust and Scratches filter layer.

The action will also select the Brush tool, but you'll need to check the size, opacity, and hardness of the Brush tool in Tool Options. Use a soft round brush which you can choose from the Brush Picker menu. Make sure the Mode is normal and the Opacity is 100%.

As I brush with my right hand, I keep the fingers of my left hand on the right and left bracket key so I can quickly make my brush larger or smaller. I'll make this just a little bit bigger. On large flat areas you can make the brush fairly big and quickly paint over all the spots.

I'll make it a little bit smaller and get this area in here…and I like to paint all the edges too. There's usually some kind of little white areas in the black background and I'd like to get rid of those.

On detailed areas zoom in, reduce the size of your brush and click instead of clicking and dragging and that will retain the most detail.

Now that didn't get rid of it completely, but that's okay. We'll fix it later. This area, it has a little bit more detail in it, so I don't want to click and drag, but areas that don't have a lot of detail, you can click and drag your brush.

When you're ready to work on dark spots, click on the layer mask of the dark spots layer and brush away dark spots…like this one right here. There aren't as many dark spots and that looks like about it.

When you're satisfied with the result, go to the Actions panel again and click on the action called Copy Visible Layers to get a single layer with everything you've done so far. Now you can finish up with the Spot Healing brush. We’ll get that little spot right here…and that's looking good. Looks like I missed a little spot right up here on her eyelash, so we'll do that one.

So here's my finished image. Let's take a look at it when we first started, and here is how it looks like now. It's really a very easy action to use, but there is one caution.

Let me demonstrate on the image called Remove-Spots-2.jpg. Anytime you have small light and dark details close together, like the pattern on the chair cushion or the pattern on the curtains, you run the risk of losing the detail.

If I brush over the chair with a large brush to remove white spots, the lighter part of the pattern gets darker. So in a case like this, you have to decide what detail is important and be more careful in that area. I will press Ctrl Z in Windows or Cmd Z on a Mac to undo that brushstroke and click on the top layer mask to select it again. This time I'll reduce the size of my brush and just click once over a dot.

And then over here it's a little hard to see my brush in this gray area. I'm going to press Shift and click again down here and now we've really got all the spot areas here. The pumpkin isn't as difficult because it doesn't have such detail together, so I don't have to be quite as careful there, but on the cushion I need to be a little bit more careful.

With the curtain though, I might decide it isn't as important. Will anyone even know or care that the curtain isn't as bright and detailed as it was in the original photo? If I'm feeling picky, then I might be more careful and do each spot with a smaller brush. But if I don't think it's a problem, I can make my brush big and brush over the entire area very quickly, even across the bottom here.

But I definitely would be more careful with the chair because that's the focus of the photo. So there are some decisions you have to make, but overall, this action really rocks when it comes to getting rid of spots and scratches. This one action will save you SO much time.

One of the biggest problems with scans of heritage photos, especially when you scan them yourself, is the white dust spots. You might also have scratches from wear and tear and black spots from dirty photos. One solution is to use the Spot Healing tool to get rid of the spots, but this can be tedious if you have a lot of spots. A better solution for most of the spots is my heritage action called Remove Spots. Let me show you how it works.

Open the photo called Remove-Spots-1.jpg from the Heritage Practice Photos folder in your class downloads.

Here's a tip before running the action. If you need to sharpen the image, do that first because sharpening will emphasize the spots and even cause new spots to appear. If you sharpen later, you'll end up having to run this action again to get rid of the new spots. So always sharpen first. I've already sharpened this photo so you don't have to do it.

Open the Actions panel. If you don't see it, in the Menu Bar, choose Window → Actions. In the Heritage Photos action set click on the first action called Remove Spots. I put it at the top because of all these actions, this is the one I use the most. Click the Play button at the bottom of the panel to run the action.

The action duplicates the original layer and applies the Dust and Scratches filter, but it stops to let you adjust the amount. Leave the Threshold at 0, but change the Radius until all but a few of the larger spots disappear. For most photos, a Radius of 6 is perfect, but since this is a practice photo, it's a little smaller than normal, so I need to also reduce the Radius a bit and I'll change it to 4. A few spots are showing, but most have disappeared.

If you use this action on a photo that's quite large, you may need to go higher than 6, but most of the time I don't change the Radius because 6 looks great.

Once you click Okay or press Enter, the action finishes and leaves you with two blended layers, each with a layer mask, one for white or light spots, and one for dark spots. If you're unfamiliar with how to use layer masks, be sure to watch my layer mask video in the Basic Skills class.

The blend modes are the secret sauce because the top layer will only darken so it only affects the white spots and the other layer will only lighten so it only affects dark spots. This allows you to use a bigger brush and paint over larger areas.

The action automatically selects the layer for white spots first because there are usually more white spots and it gives you white for the Foreground Color Chip because black on a mask hides the effect, but if you paint with white, it reveals the Dust and Scratches layer.

The action will also select the Brush tool for you, but you'll need to check the size, opacity, and hardness of the brush in the Options. Use a soft round brush, which you can choose from the Brush Picker menu. Make sure the mode is Normal, the Opacity and Flow are 100% and the Smoothing is 10%.

As I brush with my right hand, I keep the fingers of my left hand on the right and left bracket keys so I can quickly make my brush larger and smaller on the fly. On large flat areas, you can make the brush fairly big and quickly paint over all the spots. On detailed areas, zoom in, reduce the size of your brush and click instead of clicking and dragging and that will retain more detail.

If you're in a flat area, you can click and drag, but as soon as you get into detailed areas, you'll want to just click. And as you can see, I'm just changing my brush on the fly. And here that one is a dark area, so I'm just gonna keep going and getting just the white spots.

I can also click and drag on this outside area and make it a little bit more contrasting, make it a little darker out there. In fact, let's go out to full size. Now I'll click, press Shift and click, click, press Shift. Shift click and Shift click. And that gets all of this black area. Any white out there will disappear.

So let's finish up with the white. Notice this area didn't go away, but that's okay. We will take care of that later.

Okay, we are ready for the dark spots, so click on the layer mask of the dark spots. We still have a white Foreground Color Chip and now I can click to remove the dark spots. Let's zoom in a little bit and see if there are some in here. There is one right there, just a few little dark spots. Not too many. I can click and drag if it's a flat area.

You'll always see some white spots that you missed before. That is just totally normal.

When you're satisfied with the result, click on the action called Copy Visible Layers to get a single layer with everything you've done so far, and there it is right there. Now you can finish up with the Spot Healing brush, so let's make this a little bit bigger and I can click right there to get rid of that one. There's just a few spots that I wasn't able to get because I didn't make the Radius filter large enough to get all of the white spots, but this looks very good to me.

Let's go to full size here and let's look at how this looked when we started. Here's how it looked before and here's how it looks now. It's really a very easy action to use, but there is one caution.

Let me demonstrate on the image called Remove-Spots-2.jpg. Anytime you have small light and dark details close together, like the pattern on the chair cushion or the pattern on the curtains, you run the risk of losing detail.

If I get the Brush tool and brush over the chair with a large brush to remove white spots, the lighter part of the pattern gets darker. Same with the curtain. So in a case like this you have to decide what detail is important and be more careful in that area. If I want to keep the pattern of the cushion, I'll need to reduce the size of my brush and use a bit more caution painting away the white area.

I'll press Ctrl Z in Windows or Cmd Z on a Mac to undo that brush stroke and now with my brush smaller, I can just click once on a spot and get rid of any spots. Like here we have a line so I'll click and Shift click and that works okay.

On the pumpkin, that doesn't have a lot of small detail, I can make my brush bigger and it's just a lot easier to do than if you have a detailed area here, I'm going to make my brush smaller for this part of the chair.

But I might decide that the curtain isn't as important. Will anyone know or care that the curtain isn't as bright and detailed as it was in the original photo? If I'm feeling picky, then I might be more careful and do each spot with a smaller brush. But if I don't think it's a problem, I can make my brush big and brush over the entire curtain and make it fast and easy.

But I would definitely be more careful with the chair because that's the focus area of the photo.

So there are some decisions you have to make, but overall, this action really rocks when it comes to getting rid of spots and scratches. This one action will save you SO much time!