Epson 4870 Question

[Andrew]

Hello everyone,

I have just purchased the above scanner , mainly for scanning the many old
, faded & scratched family photos we have.

The brochure & the sales people said that this unit and its digital ice
feature would work on both negatives & normal prints and there is a before
and after picture in the brochure , both for prints & negs , which looked
really good.

My question is this......

I scanned a photo that had a couple of minor marks & light scratches in
it.
Once with the ICE feature not selected & Once with the ICE feature
selected.

The above mentioned marks are still there in both finished scans and I see
no difference between the two.

Is there something I am missing ??

Hoping someone can advise me what I`m doing wrong.

Thanks

Andrew

 

[Douglas MacDonald]

Quite obviously the defects are such that ICE thinks they are part of the
photo.
ICE works by using infra red to identify dust, then it replaces the dust
with a best guess based on the pixels surrounding it. In your case, I cannot
'see' the results so I can't give you a recommendation of how to get around
it.

My experience has been that ICE works best on film. In any case, it works
best on anything above the surface rather than below it. If, for example you
have a scratch on the surface of a photo. If the scratch created edges
higher than the surface, ICE will correct them. If however, the scratch is
more like a grove into the surface, usually nothing happens.

In the case of ICE not working, you can resort to Epson's dust and scratch
removal. The activation of this feature will disable ICE. Try it and see
what happens. If you still have problems, perhaps one of Kodak's speciality
tools might work. They are free to try from: www.asf.com You might also try
Polaroid's (free) dust and scratch remover. I would use the healing tool in
Photoshop myself but not everyone has that option.

Douglas

 

[PJx]

Hello everyone,

I have just purchased the above scanner , mainly for scanning the many old
, faded & scratched family photos we have.

The brochure & the sales people said that this unit and its digital ice
feature would work on both negatives & normal prints and there is a before
and after picture in the brochure , both for prints & negs , which looked
really good.

My question is this......

I scanned a photo that had a couple of minor marks & light scratches in
it.
Once with the ICE feature not selected & Once with the ICE feature
selected.

The above mentioned marks are still there in both finished scans and I see
no difference between the two.

Is there something I am missing ??

Hoping someone can advise me what I`m doing wrong.

Thanks

Andrew

You will probably want to become proficient at using a paint brush
tool to cover up the blemishes anyway. It just takes a few seconds to
fix a scratch in most cases .

Pj

 

[David R]

Actually digital ice with prints technology works differently than
with film. IR scans work with film but not with prints. With prints
they take two scans. The first one scan maps the photo and the second
is done at a different angle. I think of it as triangulation.
You can read about this at www.asf.com .