Xaiver,

Can anyone help in cleaning up this photo? Are there any plugins or bult-in filters that would work? I am mainly interested in removing the horizontal lines, then I can go in a do my usual restoration.

In my opinion, the best way to remove a specific noise pattern like, for example, your horizontal skipped ink nozzle lines created by the old printer, is to use noise removal software that recognizes a non-random noise pattern and removes that specific pattern. I used the Neat Image Pro+ version 5.2 plugin for Photoshop on your posted small example, and this is the result alongside your original < http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/MaineMan/example_Neat Image.jpg>.

As you can see, Neat Image recognized what the horizontal noise pattern was, and removed just that pattern, leaving the underlying image information intact. If you were to make the mistake of treating this printer nozzle pattern as random noise, which it most definitely is not, and blurred the image to remove that "random noise", then you would very seriously degrade the image.

Although I used Neat Image for this demonstration, I believe that Noise Ninja also has similar capabilities. Both are excellent programs.

If you want to try Neat Image for yourself, you can download a demo at the Neat Image website <http://www.neatimage.com/>. If you are interested, I can provide you with the details of the settings I used in Neat Image to produce the result I have shown. Unfortunately, the demo edition is freeware that is not nearly as capable as the Pro+ edition that I use, and I am not sure all the settings I used are available in the freeware demo. ABSoft does have downloadable Neat Image documentation. Like Photoshop, Neat Image rewards you for your effort in learning the techniques of using it.

If the freeware edition isn't capable of producing the results you need, perhaps we can find a way for you to transmit your complete image to me for processing with my Pro+ Photoshop plug-in. Also, you might want to download the Noise Ninja demo and try it, with the knowledge that capable noise removal tools can solve your problem.

I am not an expert at using Neat Image, and it is very likely that even better results could be obtained by tweaking the settings I used. I did let Neat Image automatically determine the noise pattern from the image, and then I tweaked the settings of that pattern to get a preview that I liked. I routinely use Neat Image to clean up my images using that approach. However, that's a fairly subjective process and you might create a result more to your liking with different settings.

-- Burton -- (not associated with Neat Image or ABSoft or Noise Ninja)

Stu_Bloom_x

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Removing Noise