Jerry Allen wrote:
>
> Please detail the steps...
> the action is PhotoShop version dependant.

Oh, is it? I didn't even know there was a difference. I'm using Photoshop 5.0.

Make sure the camera is set to normal image adjust, no sharpening, and locked
on to the same ISO while taking you main shot and the dark frame.

The following technique is different from my previous posting. It uses levels and
threshold instead of the channel operations.

Be sure to view the image at 100% zoom at all times. You can scroll by using the
space bar and mouse while your inside or outside any dialog boxes.

Here are the steps:
1. Have the dark frame as a layer on top of the background image perfectly aligned.

2. With the dark frame layer selected, get to the Levels dialog box
(Image-->Adjust-->Levels...) and set the input levels to... 0/black point, .50 gamma,
70/highlight.

3. Set dark frame to difference overlay mode.

4. Go to Image-->Adjust-->Threshold... and set the slider all the way to the right
(255). You'll notice that as you move the slider to the left, white spots will start
covering all the hot pixels one by one. Set it to any value where you think all the hot
pixels are covered in the white spots. You don't want to over do it or the end result
will be soft. Remeber to use the space bar and mouse to view the entire image
while at 100% zoom.

5. Go to Filter-->Blurr-->Gausian Blurr... Set it to .05

6. Go to the Levels dialog once again and set the input levels to 0, 1.10, 100.

7. Put the dark frame layer back to the normal overlay mode.

8. Get to the channels pallet and drag the RGB channel to the dotted circle on the
bottom of the pallet. (you could also command click the channel on a mac). This
will load the channel as a selection.

9. Delete the dark frame layer. It is no longer needed.

10. Go to Filter-->Noise-->Median... Set it to 2 or 3. It helps to hide the selection so
you can see better (View-->Hide Edges or command-h).

done.

There are more steps to really clean it up and bring back the details the above
steps remove but I don't want to make this a looonnng post.

-joon