An apparatus including a method of digital image processing which allows a user to remove narrow, elongated areas of image distortion from a digitized image. According to the method, the user selects a portion of an image to be edited and, once the portion has been identified, the image distortion within the portion is automatically removed. The procedure for removing the distortion includes the steps of delineating the distortion within the portion of the image selected and replacing the delineated area with a correction image which is created as a function of the attributes of the neighboring portions of the image.

A technique of editing a digital image provides for the automatic removal of blotchy areas. From a user interface of a computer system, a user of the computer system identifies a location of a blotchy area to be removed in the digital image in response to prompting by the user interface. Based on the location provided by the user, the technique automatically determines the location of the blotchy area. Attributes of pixels comprising the digital image in a neighborhood around the blotchy area are automatically collected, while excluding the pixels comprising the blotchy area. The corrupted values of the pixels of the blotchy area are replaced with values derived at least in part from the attributes of the neighboring pixels Several different embodiments are described with various degrees of automation, including one embodiment in which all blotches of a character similar to the one selected by the user are automatically identified and removed.