If you’ve ever been frustrated with the clone stamp or the spot healing brush for removing dust and scratches from scanned film (both tools distort grain and destroy details), you may want to give this technique a try. This tutorial is optimized for black and white film, but it works well for color, too.

Some details will be hard to see if you watch the embedded version. This video was recorded and edited in HD, so if you click through, you’ll get the whole picture. Any feedback on this post is welcome, I haven’t done many of these and would like to know if they’re helpful.

Thanks for your interest in my “Taking a Picture” series. Just as a note, I have continued improving my digital workflow and some of these notes are now out-of-date. Feel free to drop a line in the comments or contact me directly if you would like more information on my photographic workflow.

As an experiment, I am posting this example as a video. Feel free to ask for clarification in the comments if there’s anything in particular that you want to know more about. The embedded version is pretty small; click here for a slightly larger streaming version on Vimeo.com, or download a larger version directly from my server.

This series of blog posts follows the process of creating an image from the beginning through to the final print. When I’m done, I’m going to give the print to someone who has commented on one of the posts along the way.

Click here to read other posts in this series.