New Filter To INSTANTLY Remove JPEG Compression Artifacts in Photoshop
83.1K views 2,782 likes 141 comments
Jump to a step in the video (4)
Click a time to play the video from there.
Your choices stick across every tutorial on this device.
In this tutorial, you will learn how to remove JPEG compression artifacts in Photoshop, the blocky squares and mushy edges that build up when a photo is saved, shared, and downloaded over and over.
Found an old family photo on Facebook and noticed how rough it looks once you download it? Photoshop has a Neural Filter built for exactly that problem.
You can also watch the video walkthrough to see the filter working in real time.
Key Takeaways
- JPEG Artifacts Removal is a released Neural Filter, reached through Filter > Neural Filters.
- Toggle the filter on and pick a strength of Low, Medium, or High. Judge it at 100 percent zoom rather than fit to screen.
- Set the Output menu to Smart Filter so the correction stays editable instead of being baked into the pixels.
- Compared with the older manual cleanup, the filter holds far more fine detail in fur, hair, and skin texture.
- It repairs compression damage. It does not add resolution, so a tiny image is still a tiny image afterward.
Table of contents
Apply the JPEG Artifacts Removal Neural Filter
The Photoshop Training Channel has covered this problem before with a manual technique, which you can check out here. The Neural Filter does the same job in a fraction of the time.
You can download the tutorial photo here to follow along.
Choose Filter > Neural Filters.
In the list of featured filters, you will find JPEG Artifacts Removal.
Click to toggle on the effect, and you can choose the strength of the filter from Low, Medium, and High. Zoom to 100 percent before you decide, because compression damage is easy to miss at a fit-to-screen view.
Then, you can choose to Output the filter as a Smart Filter so you can work non-destructively.
How the Neural Filter Compares with the Manual Method
Zooming into the image, it is easy to notice that the JPEG Compression Removal using the Neural Filters has a greater definition of the fine details such as fur.
This effect may also be helpful for human subjects the way the filter can bring back definition to hairs and skin texture.
On the left, you will see the result from the Neural Filter, and on the right, the result using the older manual method.
The Neural Filter gets you there in a few clicks instead of a stack of blurs and masks, which means you can rescue a folder of old photos in the time the manual method takes on one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Choose Filter > Neural Filters, then pick JPEG Artifacts Removal from the list of featured filters and toggle it on.
No. It started life in the Beta Filters list, but Adobe now lists it as a featured, released Neural Filter, so you no longer have to dig through the beta section to find it.
Start at Low and move up only if the artifacts are still visible at 100 percent zoom. High clears the most damage but also smooths the most real texture, so it suits heavily compressed files rather than lightly damaged ones.
Set the Output menu at the bottom of the Neural Filters panel to Smart Filter. The result lands as a Smart Filter on the layer, so you can reopen the settings, mask the effect, or remove it entirely later on.
It removes the blocking and ringing that compression introduced, and it recovers a surprising amount of fine detail, but it cannot invent information the file never held. Very small or very heavily damaged images will still look soft.
For fur, hair, and skin texture it holds far more detail, so it is the better first choice. The manual method is still useful when you want precise control over which areas get smoothed, and the two can be combined on separate layers.
Selections and Masking Mastery
Complete course includes 2.5 hours of step-by-step lessons, 6 structured modules, downloadable practice files, and custom Photoshop brushes. Everything you need to master selections and masks in one place.
Keep going
Run the filter on your own damaged files and compare it against the manual method on the same image. Seeing both results side by side is the fastest way to learn where each one wins.
And if you are new here, subscribe on YouTube for a new Photoshop tutorial every week.
