Snapshot image cleaning

Snapshot is a valuable technique to save our precious time when working with images in Photoshop – be it an original copy image, something from a digital camera or from a scanned slide or negative. This is usually used to clean up images such as images for publication use.

The technique is so easy, it only involves a four-step method and is easy to recall. You can make use of this in many situations like adjusting levels, color, saturation, sharpness and other corrections without wasting time with layer masks, lasso tools, layers, rubber stamping or magic wand. To ensure that your eyes are fixed to your subject, you can use this method.

Soft-eyes are scanning problems inherent of the natural film curvature while scanning. To avoid soft-eyes problems, use snapshots technique which allows fixation in few seconds. To do this, first open your file. Then go to filter > sharpen > unsharp mask. After that, a dialog box will appear with unsharp mask defaults. Set the default amount to 75 percent, radius to 1 pixel and threshold levels to zero or one. Finally, click OK. You may notice that the entire image has the unsharp mask applied to it beforehand. As a result, it sharpens the overall image.
The texture is no longer as soft as it first appeared. This is the time when the snapshots will save your artwork.

To correct the flaws, you must go to the history palette. If it you did not find it in your desktop, you can find it normally on the right in Photoshop by default. Go to window > Show history. Once you have located your history palette, select the bold arrow-button on its right side. Click and hold it until a menu appears then go to New Snapshot. When you release your mouse, another dialog box will appear. You must enter in it the name “unsharp eyes”, then click OK.

If you have more than one snapshot in a working file, do not forget to label your snapshots to be able to have a better workflow management when it comes to organization of your images. It is nice to do it that way for easy and fast selection and for an efficient scheme.