Help with removing huge areas of speckles

[Tantien3]

I need help/advice. I've got a vintage scan of a old image where the pits of the paper have collected grime; speckling much of the photo with these bits I need to remove.
It's way too much work for the inpainting tool.
I was considering replacing each dot with the color replacement brush tool with tight tolerances for the dark specks and paint them with colors surrounding the specks.
It feels like there should be an easier method, like masking out just the speckles or something.

If I use the dust/scratches filter, the radius that would reduce these speckles also greatly reduces almost all the sparkle from areas of the dress that have pearls with hard surfaces.

So, this feels like either a very long process, unless you can suggest another method. 

Can anyone suggest a solution? Thank you very much.

[Ldina]

This worked fairly well and was fast.

Use these settings with a Live Dust & Scratches Filter. This will overdo it in the light areas. To fix that...

...Add a Live Luminosity Range Mask with the following Curve. This will only allow the filter to work fully on pixels darker than about 50% and will gradually go to about 75-80%. Pixels above 80% brightness will be excluded.  To add the Live Luminosity Range Mask, Opt-click on the Mask thumbnail (Mac). Or, Layer > New Live Mask Layer > Luminosity Range. (If you click the "Preview" toggle, it will allow you to switch between a view of the Mask in B&W, and your image. Adjust settings as needed.

[Tantien3]

10 hours ago, Ldina said:

This worked fairly well and was fast.

Use these settings with a Live Dust & Scratches Filter. This will overdo it in the light areas. To fix that...

...Add a Live Luminosity Range Mask with the following Curve. This will only allow the filter to work fully on pixels darker than about 50% and will gradually go to about 75-80%. Pixels above 80% brightness will be excluded.  To add the Live Luminosity Range Mask, Opt-click on the Mask thumbnail (Mac). Or, Layer > New Live Mask Layer > Luminosity Range. (If you click the "Preview" toggle, it will allow you to switch between a view of the Mask in B&W, and your image. Adjust settings as needed.

This is excellent information and I will definitely try this method. Thank you so much! 😊