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heal/repair tool?

Posted: Sun May 21, 2023 12:53 pm
by dougalt
Hi there, I have been a long-time user of Graphic Converter and really love the versatility of the tools and functions available - it's definitely my go-to image manipulation app (other than for primary RAW post-processing). Great to see that there has been recent reinvigoration and new versions coming out. One thing that I always found missing is a single-click repair or retouch tool. Nikon's NX Studio does it quite well, but this gets a bit "bound up" after a while and slows down or freezes. Any possibility of adding such a tool? GC has pretty much everything else!

Best,
Dougal.

Re: heal/repair tool?

Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 8:45 am
by forum_adm
Hi, can I get a sample before/after? Thorsten

Re: heal/repair tool?

Posted: Mon May 22, 2023 12:43 pm
by dougalt
Sorry - by one click I meant a brush tool that selects area by user-defined brush size, analyses and blends that brushed area with the surrounding image. I will dig out an example. Thanks, Dougal.

Re: heal/repair tool?

Posted: Tue May 23, 2023 1:18 pm
by dougalt
Hi, here is a fairly simple case where I removed some image sensor dust artefacts from the sky and some hot pixels in the lower part of the image. Using Nikon Capture NX-D "Auto Retouch Brush" tool (same as in NX Studio). The upper artefacts were removed using a brush size of 50 px and the hot pixels at 25 px. A single click over each blemish was all that was needed to remove it. The brushed area was blended automatically with the surrounding image, covering the defect; this is the advantage over the clone tool that just copies a part of the image, but may show sharp edges if there is a colour/contrast gradient within the selected area.

You may need to do a difference on the two images to more easily see the effects (unfortunately I also had to downscale and compress the images to meet the 1 MB attachment size criteria, so there are some other differences, but you can see the main areas of interest).

A tool called "Heal" in ACDSee Photo Studio (v8 - Mac) under the Develop --> Repair tab works similarly, but usually needs more than one attempt to fully cover and blend the area selected/brushed.

I can provide some other more complex examples if needed.

Thanks,
Dougal.