I have a shot in mind for the Propaganda challenge. Can I use the dust/scratch filter as a photo enhancement tool. I really want to give a different appearance to the shot(i.e less sharpening/less detail look to the whole photo).
Yes you can use this filter! here straight from the rules:
The use of filters (or non-Photoshop equivalent) is strictly limited. Any filter or stand-alone utility designed and used to preserve the integrity of the image and/or reduce the effects of noise, scratches, etc, are permitted. These include but are not limited to the Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, and Dust & Scratches filters
I was under the understanding that "dust and scratch" filters, when used on the whole image, are allowed under the current rules. What you can't do is remove dust spots one by one, e.g. cloning them out or something like that.
Filters: The use of filters (or non-Photoshop equivalent) is strictly limited. Any filter or stand-alone utility designed and used to preserve the integrity of the image and/or reduce the effects of noise, scratches, etc, are permitted. These include but are not limited to the Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, and Dust & Scratches filters, and standalone image cleanup utilities such as NeatImage. However, no effects filters may be applied to your image, with the exception of Noise and Gaussian blur, the two of which are allowed. Any filter permitted by this rule must be applied uniformly to the entire image. Selective application of the filter is prohibited.
Using the filter should be fine, just don't do any spot-editing to remove dust/scratches.
I though it was legal, but if you set the dust removal above 4, you get an entire different looking image and the higher you go the more different. I was messing with this filter on some old slides I copies that I forgot to dust and found how you can change the photo to look quite different from the original. I went out and reshot a photo that I had a slide of, and wanted to use this interesting effect. Thanks for the response. Van
Many "legal" filters can be applied with extreme settings to produce quite "interesting" effects. I do that frequently using a combination of Curves and Unsharp Mask.
