Image Doctor (Alien Skin)

www.alienskin.com

Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

If you know the name Alien Skin, than you know you can expect great things from a product in their line. If you aren’t familiar with the name, they are a leader in making Photoshop compatible plug-in filters. Do the names, Black Box, Eye Candy, Xenofex, and Eye Candy 4000 ring any bells? If you work with graphics and plug-ins then they should. All of these add great effects to images and they all come from Alien Skin. I love that name………Alien Skin. You just know you’re going to have fun with a plug-in from a company whose name is Alien Skin! Many a time I’ve needed an effect and couldn’t get just what I wanted any other way than by using Eye Candy or Xenofex.  Image Doctor is a new plug-in filter set that retouches and restores photos. It is compatible with Photoshop, Fireworks, Paint Shop Pro, and many other image editors.

Image Doctor is perfect for anyone who wants to repair and restore images. It can be used by an expert or a novice and each will get excellent results. Whether you are a photo editor, graphic designer, or a home user, you will easily be able to remove scratches, correct pixilation in jpeg’s, remove unwanted items from photos, remove spots, and other problems that frequently occur in photos.

How does it do this? It does selection-based repairs to the images. Its intelligent pattern matching lets users work with the tools from the image editors to select the area to be repaired and then launch the Image Doctor tool of choice from their filters/effects menu selections. The repair is made quickly and easily with adjustments available in the Image Doctor Dialog Box.

I first discovered Image Doctor last summer when it was in its beta release. I rarely download and use a beta product. Usually I don’t have the extra hard drive room or don’t have the time to work with a product that is in a stage of development and may not be stable. I had no such problems with this beta. It was a time-limited beta and I didn’t get a chance to work with all of the filters. I mostly used the spot lifter and I got to try the smart fill. I was impressed with the results I obtained and looked forward to seeing the final product release. Now that I have worked with the final product, I like it very much.

I was working with color enhancement tools at the time I found Image Doctor. So quite naturally if I was color correcting old photos, I wanted to fix any damage that they had. Repairing damage can be a time consuming and often very frustrating job. I would go from application to application using their various tools trying to get the best results possible. Once I plugged in Image Doctor into my plug-in directory, it was available no matter what application I was using and it fixed problems that were driving me crazy in many old photos that I had. It also gave me better ways to fix other problems that I ran into such as removed unwanted objects from photos.

Last month I reviewed a color correction tool and in it I used a photo that I had color corrected and then showed a repair that I did with Image Doctor. The white border of the photo was streaked and yellowed. The yellowing was uneven. It went from light spots to a very dark brownish yellow. It needed a lot of work to bring it back to an even color that would look natural against the colored portion of the photo.  The first example is the original image. The photo was in very bad condition.

First I color corrected the photo. Then I went to work on the streaks and the yellowed border. I used Smart Fill to repair the streaks. You can see that they are completely gone and that the repaired sections blend in

perfectly with the areas they were in. Then I did the same with the yellowed border and brought it back to a white edge that complimented the photo. I was asked why I didn’t just fill the outer edge with white. I didn’t do that because a fill is flat. It wouldn’t retain the subtle blend of shades that make up the border. It would be stark white against the photo. I tried it and it looked unnatural. The border stuck out like a big white frame. That wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted an edge that was dramatically improved yet retained the look of what would be on the photo if it hadn’t been so aged and damaged. I hope I am explaining this so that you understand what I mean. What I didn’t want was a phony looking edge. With Image Doctor, I was able to produce the perfect color edge for that photo that retained natural texture and tone. (The example included here is an enlargement of the original photo edge.)

The Interface. Alien Skin has improved their interface in Image Doctor.  The filter controls work in a logical order, from the top down. The upper slider controls the repair effect and the other controls blend the repaired sections into the background of the image. The have included a button to show the original image. The lets you toggle between the original image and the changes being made for comparison. The have also  added a new help system that is context sensitive. Just the press F1 key to launch the help for the filter you are working with and access the tutorials.  Other new features include, large preview with all layers visible, unlimited redo/undo, keyboard shortcuts, command menus (settings and presets), and mouseover help text.

The Filters. The filters that come with Image Doctor are Smart Fill, Scratch Remover, JPEG Repair, and Spot Lifter. I will show examples how each worked using several of the images that came with Image Doctor but with the repairs that I made.

Smart Fill.  Smart fill is used to remove large objects from photos and blending the repairs into the background. It can remove a bottle from grass; remove people from photos, or take out any other item that you want to remove without leaving telltale areas or seams. I also used it to sample good areas of my border in photos and removed marks from photos. You need to make a good selection from the area. Using the Lasso tool, Magic Wand, or the Quick Mask tool works best for making these selections. On the straight border I did use the Rectangular tool though.  You want to try and select just the part you are trying to remove.  If the item crosses several different backgrounds, make selections from each of these areas and work from the top to the bottom. The same is true for long items. Smaller selections give you better results. It is suggested with long items that you begin on the left and work towards the right.  

First you make the selection, then open the filters and launch the Smart Fill tool from Image Doctor. You will see a texture source box on the image. You can drag this box around to sample textures from the background. It can also be resized. Centering it around the item with a large area sampled will give you a good area to work with. Adjust the various sliders until the replacement section closely matches the area you are working with. To seamlessly place the sampled area in the background, use the “Stitch into Background” check box. If this produces a rough edge use the “Randomize Texture” button to generate a better match. This method usually works better than not stitching into the background and feathering. Examples:

The bottle example shows removal of an object from a background that is one texture………grass. Unfortunately, the image with the bottle selected in too small to show the selection drawn around the bottle. In the photo with the fire hydrant, it touches the trees and the ground sections of the photo. The hydrant had to be removed in sections. You can see that the hydrant has been completely removed from the photo.

Scratch Remover. The Scratch Remover filter is used to remove tears, creases, scratches, dust, and other unwanted items from photos. It can also be used to remove long, thin objects such as a pole and for removing text such as time/date codes. (An example of a time code is seen in the Interface image above.) Follow the same type of procedure as in the Smart Fill, make good selections and take the selections that only include the defective area. Use the Lasso tool, Magic Wand, or the Quick Mask tool. Again, best results will be achieved when using multiple selections when the defect crosses into areas that are different. In the example shown below, the scratches cross over the man’s head onto the carpet in one spot and then across his face, sideburn, ear, hair, and carpet in the second scratch. In the second example, I have removed the upper scratch and drawn a selection around the portion of the scratch that is on the carpet. In the third photo, all of the scratches have been removed.  

Spot Lifter. The Spot Lifter removes blemishes from a photo but it retains the texture and detail of the area underneath. Use it to remove birthmarks, acne, dark circles, etc. from facial features or skin areas. It also works on other types of spots that are on photos as well as  low-contrast imperfections like watermarks, dust, or stains.  I used this to remove tiny white flecks that covered an old photo that I had and it did an excellent job. The examples below show the types of spots that I was successfully able to remove. The first example is of a Dalmatian dog, I removed some of its black spots. This image didn’t come with Image Doctor. The second is an image that came with the application of a man with dark spots under his eyes, I removed them too - on one eye.

JPEG Repair. JPEG Repair is used to fix over-compressed JEPGs. The pixilation, small squares, can be removed and yet retain detail and add grain. It can be used on an entire image or in smaller areas as needed.  JPEG Repair should be used on an image first and then crop or resize it. It needs the 8x8 pixel regularity to work effectively. This filter can be used with our without selecting areas of the image.

This image has JPEG artifacts, pixilation, all over it. Using the JPEG Repair tool, all of the little squares have been removed and the image has a smooth, clear look in the second example.

This is another plug-in that I would recommend to anyone who is working with photos and trying to fix the wide variety of problems that you can run into. By following the tips and recommendations for use, you can get very good results quickly and easily.

Requirements: This is a plug-in it requires a host program such as Adobe Photoshop 5.5 or later, Paint Shop Pro 6.0 or later, Macromedia Fireworks 4.0 or later for Windows, Adobe Photoshop 5.5 or later, Pentium II processor, Window 98/2000/Me/XP (Windows NT is not supported), 64 MB or more of physical RAM; for the Macintosh - Macromedia Fireworks 4.0 or later for Macintosh; PowerPC processor, Macintosh System Software 9 or later, OS X10.1 or later; 64 MB of more of physical RAM.

Image Doctor sells for an estimated street price of $129. A sidegrade price for registered users of Alien Skin’s other products (Eye Candy 4000, Xenofex, or Splat!) is $99. They also offer academic pricing.  For more in information about Image Doctor or other Alien Skin products please visit their web site at www.alienskin.com.

Click here to see a how-to flash demo . Very large file, please be patient.