RepairImage
Repair a photo

Remove foxing and mould spotsClear brown spots and specks

Add a spotty print. The brown spots are found and shown to you, then filled from the picture around each one.

The same photograph with the spots found and filled from the picture around them
A desk photograph covered in small brown foxing spots
BeforeAfter
Foxing spots found and clearedDrag to compare
Scan at 600 dpi so the smallest spots are at least two pixels across; at 300 dpi many foxing spots are smaller than that and read as grain.

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On the bench

Brown foxing spots are found for you, two to forty pixels across, and put on the mask to check. Unmark anything that is part of the picture, then fill.

Drop a scan of a damaged print. Nothing is filled in until the marks are on screen and you have looked at them.

The spot detector runs when the scan opens and its proposals arrive on the mask. Its strength and the grey-speck option are in the Detect panel.

Scan at 600 dpi so the smallest spots are at least two pixels across; at 300 dpi many foxing spots are smaller than that and read as grain.

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Choose photo

What this mode does

Foxing spots share three things that picture detail rarely does: they are small, they are darker than what surrounds them, and they are brown, because the stain absorbs blue most and green next. The detector measures all three on every pixel against a local average, groups what passes, and keeps only roundish groups between 2 and 40 pixels across at the working size. Its thresholds were set on generated test images; on a warm, busy photograph it can also propose small specks of real detail, which is why every proposal is shown before anything is filled.

What it keeps goes onto the same editable mask as everything else on the bench. You see every proposal before anything is filled, unmark what belongs to the picture, add what it missed with the brush or lasso, and the fill closes each spot from the picture around it.

Grey specks are off by default because many photographs have small dark detail that is not damage. Turn them on when the print has mould or fly spots.

When this is the wrong tool

  • Spots larger than 40 pixels at the working size are left out on purpose. Mark them by hand, or use the heal brush, which copies texture as well as tone.
  • Where mould has consumed the emulsion, nothing around it can say what was there. Those regions are classified gone.
  • Foxing on the back of a thin print can show through on a scan. Scanning with a black card behind the print reduces that before any repair.

Questions about foxing and mould

What is foxing on a photograph?
Foxing is the rust-brown spotting that appears on old paper and on the paper base of prints, usually linked to damp storage and to impurities in the paper. On a scan it shows as small brown dots, darker than the picture around them and darker in blue than in red, which is what the detector here looks for.
How does the detector decide what is a spot?
Every pixel is compared with the average colour of the picture around it, over a window about two and a half times the largest spot. A pixel is a candidate when it is darker than that and its colour has moved towards brown: its blue has fallen against its red further than the surrounding picture's, and its green has fallen too. Plain shadow darkens all three alike, so it does not qualify. Candidates are grouped, and a group is kept only when it is roundish and between 2 and 40 pixels across, so an eye, a twig or a shadow is left alone. Everything kept is shown on the mask before anything is filled.
It marked something that is part of the picture. What do I do?
Unmark it. Switch the mask brush to Unmark and paint over it, or lower the strength and press Find again. The proposals are a starting point; the mask you approve is what gets filled.
Can it remove mould?
Mould specks that sit on the surface often scan as dark grey dots; turn on Include grey specks to find them too. Where mould has eaten into the emulsion, the picture there is gone. Those regions are classified as gone in the record and the automatic pass does not fill them.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. The scan never leaves this tab; the detector and the fill both run in your browser.

Related

Photographic visual for Foxing And Mould
Foxing And Mould