heal/repair tool?

[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.

[forum_adm]

Hi, can I get a sample before/after? Thorsten

[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.

[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.