Digital Ice for B&W scans?

[Lunaray]

Is there a way to make Digital Ice work with black & white film scans? If
not, is there some other software/plug-in that works equally well for black
and white? I'm using a Nikon LS-8000 scanner w/NikonScan 3.1 and Photoshop
7.0! The Photoshop tools work fine for cleaning up my negatives, but it's
rather tedious & time consuming!

Thanks all,
Ray

 

[Jim]

On most scanners, Digital Ice uses the infra red channel which detects not
only scratches but also silver grains.
So, unless you are using those B&W films which are developed in C41, Ice
will not be very successful.

Jim

 

[Mendel Leisk]

Is there a way to make Digital Ice work with black & white film scans? If
not, is there some other software/plug-in that works equally well for black
and white? I'm using a Nikon LS-8000 scanner w/NikonScan 3.1 and Photoshop
7.0! The Photoshop tools work fine for cleaning up my negatives, but it's
rather tedious & time consuming!

Thanks all,
Ray

ICE does not work with silver based black and white. It will work with
color dye based black and white (Ilford XP2, etc.).

This tutorial made my PS clean-up work go a lot quicker, at least for
zapping the small, isolated dust specks:

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

 

[Lunaray]

Thanks Mendel, I'll give this a try!

 

[Hecate]

Is there a way to make Digital Ice work with black & white film scans? If
not, is there some other software/plug-in that works equally well for black
and white? I'm using a Nikon LS-8000 scanner w/NikonScan 3.1 and Photoshop
7.0! The Photoshop tools work fine for cleaning up my negatives, but it's
rather tedious & time consuming!

There is a less time consuming method:

Buy yourself a soft blow brush, the type you use to get dust of
lenses. That helps a lot. As does canned air (but I find the blower
more gentle and less prone to leaving a mark if I get too close).
Also, good storage in dust free packaging helps. Generally, paying
attention to storage and using a blower solves 99% of all dust
problems.

 

[Lunaray]

I do that now, but some of my older negatives have had a rough life moving
from place to place and even when they were newly developed and I did all my
printing in a darkroom, I would still have to spend a lot of time mixing
spotting dyes and using a tiny little brush to make my prints gallery-ready!
It's much easier these days, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.
Digital Ice sure works good for color though, I hated trying to spot color
prints the old fashioned way, black & white was bad enough!

 

[Ronald Bruck]

There is a less time consuming method:

Buy yourself a soft blow brush, the type you use to get dust of
lenses. That helps a lot. As does canned air (but I find the blower
more gentle and less prone to leaving a mark if I get too close).
Also, good storage in dust free packaging helps. Generally, paying
attention to storage and using a blower solves 99% of all dust
problems.

Very useful, but in my experience it doesn't help much. Almost-virgin
negatives which have been in glassine envelopes since returning from
the developer show scads of dust particles at 4800 dpi. You'd think
those developers were smoking something which produces lots of
particles, like hemp or something

And this dust is often "sticky", i.e. you can blow and brush all you
like but it's stuck to the emulsion. You can SEE the particle still
there.

What I find works is to use PEC-12 and a very soft chamois (I like
ProMaster). No doubt this is hard on the negative, but once a slide or
negative is scanned and archived, there's no need to ever do it again.
(Until they come up with a 1 megapixel/inch scanner, that is. Where
the dye particles look like boulders.)

--Ron Bruck

 

[Hecate]

Very useful, but in my experience it doesn't help much. Almost-virgin
negatives which have been in glassine envelopes since returning from
the developer show scads of dust particles at 4800 dpi. You'd think
those developers were smoking something which produces lots of
particles, like hemp or something

LOL! I haven't really had that problem.

And this dust is often "sticky", i.e. you can blow and brush all you
like but it's stuck to the emulsion. You can SEE the particle still
there.

What I find works is to use PEC-12 and a very soft chamois (I like
ProMaster). No doubt this is hard on the negative, but once a slide or
negative is scanned and archived, there's no need to ever do it again.
(Until they come up with a 1 megapixel/inch scanner, that is. Where
the dye particles look like boulders.)

I also find lint gloves work. Just wipe your thumb across lightly and
it picks up most of the loose dust.