Edit frame in external editor?

Question

Sorry for the newbie question. Is there an easy way to edit frames in an external editor (Photoshop, whatever)?
I have some video take from film that has some scratches I'd like to clean up. It's only a handful of frames, so it would be easy to do in a photo editor. I suppose I could export a frame or frame sequence, edit them, and import them back in. The problem is that I'd need to match up the stills to their original frames, make the the right length, etc. Not impossible, but certainly not simple. I'm hoping there's an easier way?
By the way, I tried the manual "object remover" method, which involves a cloned clip placed over the clip in question, and cropping/transforming to cover the scratch with a section from somewhere else, but in this particular instance there's no easy place to get a cover-up section that matches. (Hope that made sense.)
Ideas?
Dan

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply. I have SliceX, but as I mentioned in my post, for these particular videos, there's no good area from which to clone. I suppose it would be possible, but *very* tedious to get the selection that exact. Perhaps I'm just not coordinated enough.
I've discovered a workflow which works well for me - easier than I thought it would be. I'll show it here, in case it helps anyone else:
Isolate the frames in question by using the Blade tool and separating them into their own section - this makes lining up the result frames easier when you paste them back in.
Export the section as a frame sequence.
Import the frames in iPhoto. I know, this sounds silly, but actually, iPhoto's Touchup tool is awesome for tasks like this. Way better (to me) than Adobe Photoshop Elements.
In iPhoto, when you start editing a frame, it has a strip at the bottom showing all the frames, and it's easy to switch between frames. This makes it easy to verify your touchups against the other frames.
When done, I choose to drag the files from iPhoto to a folder. I suppose you could also import them inside FCPX from its reference to iPhoto - but this seemed easier to me. Perhaps I'm wrong - I will try the other way next time.
iPhoto does reduce the image quality slightly - I'm guessing this, since the file sizes are much smaller. But for what I'm working on, it's not noticeable.
I drag the photos back into the Event, and into the original timeline.
I select all of them, hit Ctrl+D and change the duration to 1 frame.
Voila! Done. Not so hard after all. I'm amazed that iPhoto makes this so easy.
The only thing that iPhoto does that makes this a slightly longer process, is that when you switch from frame to frame, it resets the Zoom & Pan, and un-selects the Touchup tool. Not that big a deal, but if you've zoomed and panned to a specific place, it would be nice if all the frames opened up the same way, so you can check your results against the other frames. I wonder if Adobe Photoshop Elements does this - I'll have to check. As I said, not the end of the world. But *so* close to perfection... 
All in all, I can remove a scratch from, say, 15 frames, pretty quickly. I'll have to time myself next time I do this, now that I've got the workflow down.
Dan