Advice for an "ice-like" product please

[Sin Loi]

The situation is, I recently came across several hundred 35mm negatives from
30 years ag, and the years have not been kind to them at all. Some
scratches, deterioration, etc.

I'm using a CanoScan FS2720U, and trying to repair these with PhotoShop LE
or Paint Shop Pro has been less than desirable. Takes forever to do one
manually, and the "remove dust and scratches" seems to soften far too much
when making anything near an effective repair.

Is there something in shareware that will do a good job of repair or
restoration on these?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Jean]

| The situation is, I recently came across several hundred 35mm negatives
from
| 30 years ag, and the years have not been kind to them at all. Some
| scratches, deterioration, etc.
|
| I'm using a CanoScan FS2720U, and trying to repair these with PhotoShop
LE
| or Paint Shop Pro has been less than desirable. Takes forever to do one
| manually, and the "remove dust and scratches" seems to soften far too
much
| when making anything near an effective repair.
|
| Is there something in shareware that will do a good job of repair or
| restoration on these?
|
| Thanks for your help.
|
|
|

Go to Polaroid's web site and download their free Dust & Scratch Removal
program - it's quite effective and can be used as a "stand-alone" program
or as a plug-in to Photoshop.

Jean

 

[Robert Feinman]

The situation is, I recently came across several hundred 35mm negatives from
30 years ag, and the years have not been kind to them at all. Some
scratches, deterioration, etc.

I'm using a CanoScan FS2720U, and trying to repair these with PhotoShop LE
or Paint Shop Pro has been less than desirable. Takes forever to do one
manually, and the "remove dust and scratches" seems to soften far too much
when making anything near an effective repair.

Is there something in shareware that will do a good job of repair or
restoration on these?

Thanks for your help.

Polaroid free filter at:

http://www.polaroid.com/global/detail.jsp?FOLDER<>folder_id=
282574488338434&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441760086
(You'll have to rewrap the above address into one line)

 

[Mendel Leisk]

It's not totally clear from your post if you are scanning black and
white (silver based) or color emulsion. Assuming it is black and
white, do check out this tutorial for "surgical" application of
photoshop's dust and scratch filter:

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_5_1.htm

It is not automated, but very effective at efficiently zapping
isolated dust. For scratches, ps healing brush does the job most
effectively for me. Occasionally, in heavily patterned areas, I'll
resort to clone stamp.

I would not use the polaroid plug-in on keepers.

 

[L Brown]

Polaroid free filter at:

http://www.polaroid.com/global/detail.jsp?FOLDER<>folder_id=
282574488338434&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441760086
(You'll have to rewrap the above address into one line)

Or use tonyurl:

http://tinyurl.com/2abhs

 

[Sin Loi]

I'm scanning color 35mm negatives.

 

[Sin Loi]

Thank you, I'll take a look at that.

 

[Charles Kinghorn]

I am very curious as to why you would not use the Polaroid Dust and
Scratch Removal program on keepers. I have found the program very
useful when set on its lowest settings. This still requires some
retouching with the rubber stamp tool, but it removes the worst of the
dust and other small marks. I have used it with older negatives and
prints where age has resulted in the accumulation of a lot of embedded
dust as a result of poor handling. The lowest settings of the program
do not appear to affect sharpness and detail during the cleanup
process.

Charles Kinghorn

 

[David C Miers]

I use the Polaroid filter along with Photoshop utilities, but have recently
also started experimenting with Paint Shop Pro. The scratch remover is
excellent and does little damage to the image. The smoothing with edge
preserve and dust removal tools in Paint shop pro are just the ticket for
some photos. It seems nothing works for everything though. Paint Shop is not
fast, but much faster then doing it manually!

Dave

 

[David C Miers]

I should add that it does not work on 16(48)bit images though

 

[Mendel Leisk]

Hi Charles, regarding the polaroid plug-in, 2 things turned me off it.

First, when applied to 16 bit images, it caused a real bad comb-teeth
effect on the histogram, which seemed ominous to me. OTOH, 8 bit
images didn't exhibit this, or very little.

Second, in particular with my grainy Tri-X scans, I was not able to
find a setting that would get the defects WITHOUT wiping out the grain
structure, and regardless of setting, it would not get enough of the
defects to justify in time saving.

You could use it in place of Photoshop's Dust and Scratch filter, in
the workflow I linked to above (Ian Lyon's Computer Darkroom tutorial
on D&S with history brush).

Incidentally, to the original poster, the linked tutorial works
equally well with color images, I guess I was thinking, if you're
scanning color and really frustrated, bite the bullet and get an
infrared scanner.

I am cleaning Vuescan raw files (1800 worth), scans of Tri-X. I spend
between 15 minutes and 2 hours on each, cleaning, depending on the
damage level. Been at it a little over a year now, and about 4/5
through.

Cheers all!

 

[Charles Kinghorn]

Thanks for the information, Mendel; your points are well taken. In my
case I had to scan, retouch, and correct 40+ pictures for my son's
40th birthday, some of these pictures going back to his first year. In
most cases I didn't have the negatives, only snapshot-sized prints
which had been badly stored and mishandled. I had to do this all
within a week while working full time at another job. Polaroid's
program was a life saver. I was impressed with it, but only on its
lowest settings. And I didn't have to deal with grain at the time.

My serious work, I hope, never gets that dirty; for that I use the
rubber stamp tool.

I saved your link and will review that procedure as well.

Thanks again.

Charles

 

[Raphael Bustin]

I use the Polaroid filter along with Photoshop utilities, but have recently
also started experimenting with Paint Shop Pro. The scratch remover is
excellent and does little damage to the image. The smoothing with edge
preserve and dust removal tools in Paint shop pro are just the ticket for
some photos. It seems nothing works for everything though. Paint Shop is not
fast, but much faster then doing it manually!

IMO, the Polaroid program does more harm
than good on the images I've tried it on -- at
least with the default settings, and without
making manual masks to help it along.

Having used a Polaroid film scanner for a couple
of years, I was never much impressed with their
abilities in software, so I can't say I'm terribly
disappointed. Expectations were low.

Real ICE -- the kind that happens in the scanner
with the help of an IR channel -- is damned near
miraculous, however. On my Nikon film scanner,
it's on all the time, and I honestly cannot discern
any loss of sharpness from using it.

Too bad it doesn't work on BW, but for me that's
not a big deal. It works like a champ on color
negatives and most chromes.



rafe b.
http://www.terrapinphoto.com

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

IMO, the Polaroid program does more harm
than good on the images I've tried it on -- at
least with the default settings, and without
making manual masks to help it along.

In general, masks are mandatory, regardless the application used.

SNIP

Real ICE -- the kind that happens in the scanner
with the help of an IR channel -- is damned near
miraculous, however. On my Nikon film scanner,
it's on all the time, and I honestly cannot discern
any loss of sharpness from using it.

Yes, if implemented well, there is very little influence on undamaged parts,
while the damaged part can 'only' get better. An improvement could be if for
larger damaged parts it becomes possible to add a little 'structure' rather
than flat featureless color (a kind of automatic healing brush). It can be
done by hand which is more accurate, but it's less productive.

Too bad it doesn't work on BW, but for me that's
not a big deal. It works like a champ on color
negatives and most chromes.

Yes, films with IR opacity will remain a problem with one fixed IR source.

Bart

 

[Spoon2001]

Too bad it doesn't work on BW, but for me that's

Yes, films with IR opacity will remain a problem with one fixed IR
source.

Does this mean that using more than one IR source could make ICE work on BW
negatives? Is there any such scanner? I need that badly.

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

Does this mean that using more than one IR source could make
ICE work on BW negatives? Is there any such scanner? I need
that badly.

Theoretically one could envision dual defect detection lightsources
illuminating at different angles, probably not very deep IR but more likely
visible spectrum, which would allow some depth perspective of dust on top of
the film emulsion, or deep scratches. That would require efficient focus, or
assume flat film, and create a 3D defect mask from shadow displacement
between the two lightsources.

I believe there is a flatbed scanner available, claiming to have ICE for
reflection copies. which uses such a principle. I have not tested that, so I
have no idea how well that implementation works, but is theoretically
feasible.

For now, you probably need a diffuse lightsource to suppress such artifacts.

Bart
Bart

 

[tbl]

Theoretically one could envision dual defect detection lightsources
illuminating at different angles, probably not very deep IR but more likely
visible spectrum, which would allow some depth perspective of dust on top of
the film emulsion, or deep scratches. That would require efficient focus, or
assume flat film, and create a 3D defect mask from shadow displacement
between the two lightsources.

I believe there is a flatbed scanner available, claiming to have ICE for
reflection copies. which uses such a principle. I have not tested that, so I
have no idea how well that implementation works, but is theoretically
feasible.

But negatives have two sides... which could both be dirty.