Using the Spot Patch Tool

Using the Spot & Patch Tool

The Spot & Patch tool is designed to magically eliminate small unwanted elements of an image, such as dust or skin blemishes. Let's use this tool to remove some sensor dust on the Jackson Hole images.

Note

The image sensor on a digital camera is susceptible to dust. This dust can be eliminated with proper care and cleaning of the protective glass of the sensor, but sensor dust is often not detectable by looking through the camera and goes unnoticed until the images reach the postproduction stage.

1.	Select Jackson Hole 6 of 23 through Jackson Hole 19 of 23 in the Browser. Then, if necessary, drag the divider between the Browser and Viewer to create a larger Viewer so that you can see all eight images.
2.	Press the S key to turn the Primary Only option off, if necessary. All of the nonprimary selections should have a white border in the Viewer.
3.	Click the first image, Jackson Hole 6 of 23, in the Viewer and press Option-R to switch to the Primary Viewer mode to focus on this first image.
4.	Position the mouse cursor over the sensor dust located near the top of the image, just left of center, and then press the Z key to zoom in on the area. The sensor dust appears as a small dark blotch on the image. Sensor dust is often easier to detect in relatively flat color areas such as skies. Note Pressing the Z key to zoom may deselect images, as Aperture will adjust the number of selected images to fit the size of your Viewer. This is true even if you are in the Primary Viewer mode.
5.	Click the Spot & Patch tool or press the X key to select it. The Spot & Patch HUD appears, letting you set the Radius before you click the area that you want to eliminate in the image.
6.	Drag the Radius slider in the Spot & Patch HUD to 26.0. A circle previewing the Radius size appears around a target crosshair when you position the cursor over the image.
7.	Click the sensor dust with the Spot & Patch tool. A yellow circle appears to indicate that you applied a Spot & Patch correction. The Spot & Patch tool replaces the spot using pixel values from the area around the selection.
8.	Press Return to accept the Spot & Patch results. Press Z to zoom back out. Press Option-U to view all the selected images. That's all it takes to remove sensor dust from an image. Now, let's clean up the dust on some other Jackson Hole images.