Retouching scratchy black and white scans

wrote:

Dear experts,

Recently, I bought the Nikon coolscan 5000
and did some scans.

The digical ICE did a fabulous job on the color
negatives and transparencies. There were no
flaws that I could see at all. Even though
there were flaws on the images.

Then I scanned some black and white negs.
And I saw soooo many flaws. Scratches,
dust, etc.

Yes, ICE is awsome. Too bad silver grains are opaque in the infrared :-).

I have no experience in Photoshop yet.

What is the best way to retouch all the flaws out?

Is there a software that can make the retouching
easier? Something like a digital eraser of sorts?

I do this by using the spot healing brush, operating on a separate layer, with "sample all layers" checked (name approximate).

It’s still an amazing pain; for my typical highschool negatives (1970-1972) I spend 10 minutes to half an hour on each one, unless there are also long scratches, in which case it can be worse.

There’s a Polaroid plugin that attempts to automate it; I haven’t used it, and no close friends swear by it, so I can’t really give you any information.

What I can see at 200% is a LOT worse than what I can see if I make a 4×5 print, or even an 8×10 print; which suggests that I’m cleaning up more than I really have to.

wrote in message

Dear experts,

Recently, I bought the Nikon coolscan 5000
and did some scans.

The digical ICE did a fabulous job on the color
negatives and transparencies. There were no
flaws that I could see at all. Even though
there were flaws on the images.

Then I scanned some black and white negs.
And I saw soooo many flaws. Scratches,
dust, etc.

I have no experience in Photoshop yet.

What is the best way to retouch all the flaws out?

Is there a software that can make the retouching
easier? Something like a digital eraser of sorts?

I don’t want to do this pixel by pixel.

Thanks a lot!

You must learn to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Read the Help.

Photoshop has several tools to clean up photos.

The Dust and Scratch filter works for some things. Dust and Scratch is one of the tools in the Noise group of filters.

The Clone (Rubber Stamp) tool does wonders for correcting blemishes.

The reason that digital ICE does not work on B&W films is that silver is opaque to Infrared light. It is also the reason Digital ICE does not work on some Kodachrome slides. There is often leftover silver in Kodachrome film.

—
CSM1
http://www.carlmcmillan.com
—

David, here’s technique that’ll save you a tremendous amount of time. It works best on large areas without a lot of high-contrast detail (shadows or out-of-focus areas). I’ll assume what you have is white flaws.

Duplicate the background layer. Change the duplicate’s blend mode to Darken. Now choose the Move tool (keyboard shortcut = V) and use the arrow keys to move the layer one pixel sideways and one pixel vertically. The small, hard-to-retouch flaws disappear. You may have to move slightly farther if the average size of the flaws is larger.

Unfortunately, sharp, high-contrast details such as eyelashes will appear duplicated by this technique. You will need use a layer mask to remove the duplicate, then retouch those areas separately with the Clone tool.

If your flaws are black instead of white, use a blend mode of Lighten instead.

Tom Nelson
Tom Nelson Photography

wrote:

Dear experts,

Recently, I bought the Nikon coolscan 5000
and did some scans.

The digical ICE did a fabulous job on the color
negatives and transparencies. There were no
flaws that I could see at all. Even though
there were flaws on the images.

Then I scanned some black and white negs.
And I saw soooo many flaws. Scratches,
dust, etc.

I may be over-simplifying things here, but did you scan the black and white ones in black and white mode?
If you scan them with the exact same settings you used for the colour ones, wouldn’t you get the same flaw free results?

"Fat Sam" wrote:

wrote:

Dear experts,

Recently, I bought the Nikon coolscan 5000
and did some scans.

The digical ICE did a fabulous job on the color
negatives and transparencies. There were no
flaws that I could see at all. Even though
there were flaws on the images.

Then I scanned some black and white negs.
And I saw soooo many flaws. Scratches,
dust, etc.

I may be over-simplifying things here, but did you scan the black and white ones in black and white mode?
If you scan them with the exact same settings you used for the colour ones, wouldn’t you get the same flaw free results?

No. ICE doesn’t work with most B&W films. ICE requires that the film be transparent to IR so it can find the (IR opaque or refracting) dust and scratches, but the silver remaining in B&W films is itself opaque to IR. You have to turn off ICE to scan B&W, at which point the dust and scratches show up in all their glory.

The only good news here is that a lot of the time, you only need to clean up the dust in sky and other smooth areas, so it’s merely a pain, not a near impossibility.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Fat Sam wrote:

wrote:

Dear experts,

Recently, I bought the Nikon coolscan 5000
and did some scans.

The digical ICE did a fabulous job on the color
negatives and transparencies. There were no
flaws that I could see at all. Even though
there were flaws on the images.

Then I scanned some black and white negs.
And I saw soooo many flaws. Scratches,
dust, etc.

I may be over-simplifying things here, but did you scan the black and white ones in black and white mode?
If you scan them with the exact same settings you used for the colour ones, wouldn’t you get the same flaw free results?

No.

ICE works by doing a 4th scan pass in the infrared, and then essentially interpolating into the blank spaces in that scan (caused by gunk on the film, scratches, etc.). This only works because the dyes used in color slides and negatives are all transparent in the infrared (except some of the versions of cyan dye in some Kodachromes, which is why some Kodachromes cause trouble). The silver grains in traditional B&W film all block infrared, so the ICE system decides the entire image is damaged, and has nothing to replace it from. (Dye-based B&W films like Ilford XP2 work fine with ICE)

"David Dyer-Bennet" wrote in message

Fat Sam wrote:

wrote:

Dear experts,

Recently, I bought the Nikon coolscan 5000
and did some scans.

The digical ICE did a fabulous job on the color
negatives and transparencies. There were no
flaws that I could see at all. Even though
there were flaws on the images.

Then I scanned some black and white negs.
And I saw soooo many flaws. Scratches,
dust, etc.

I may be over-simplifying things here, but did you scan the black and white ones in black and white mode?
If you scan them with the exact same settings you used for the colour ones, wouldn’t you get the same flaw free results?

No.

ICE works by doing a 4th scan pass in the infrared, and then essentially interpolating into the blank spaces in that scan (caused by gunk on the film, scratches, etc.). This only works because the dyes used in color slides and negatives are all transparent in the infrared (except some of the versions of cyan dye in some Kodachromes, which is why some Kodachromes cause trouble). The silver grains in traditional B&W film all block infrared, so the ICE system decides the entire image is damaged, and has nothing to replace it from. (Dye-based B&W films like Ilford XP2 work fine with ICE)

I recently saw what appears to be an improved version, "ICE4." It is supposed to have better results with Kodachromes. I didn’t notice if it was purported to work with B&W. Some Nikon scanners are implementing it.

jeremy wrote:

ICE works by doing a 4th scan pass in the infrared, and then essentially interpolating into the blank spaces in that scan (caused by gunk on the film, scratches, etc.). This only works because the dyes used in color slides and negatives are all transparent in the infrared (except some of the versions of cyan dye in some Kodachromes, which is why some Kodachromes cause trouble). The silver grains in traditional B&W film all block infrared, so the ICE system decides the entire image is damaged, and has nothing to replace it from. (Dye-based B&W films like Ilford XP2 work fine with ICE)

I recently saw what appears to be an improved version, "ICE4." It is supposed to have better results with Kodachromes. I didn’t notice if it was purported to work with B&W. Some Nikon scanners are implementing it.

ICE4 is a set of four functions, with things like color restauration and grain control added to the Digital ICE dust and scratch removal. It still doesn’t work with Kodachrome AFAIK.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.com

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

jeremy wrote:

ICE works by doing a 4th scan pass in the infrared, and then essentially interpolating into the blank spaces in that scan (caused by gunk on the film, scratches, etc.). This only works because the dyes used in color slides and negatives are all transparent in the infrared (except some of the versions of cyan dye in some Kodachromes, which is why some Kodachromes cause trouble). The silver grains in traditional B&W film all block infrared, so the ICE system decides the entire image is damaged, and has nothing to replace it from. (Dye-based B&W films like Ilford XP2 work fine with ICE)

I recently saw what appears to be an improved version, "ICE4." It is supposed to have better results with Kodachromes. I didn’t notice if it was purported to work with B&W. Some Nikon scanners are implementing it.

ICE4 is a set of four functions, with things like color restauration and grain control added to the Digital ICE dust and scratch removal. It still doesn’t work with Kodachrome AFAIK.

In fact, ICE has worked fine with Kodachrome back to the LS-2000 scanner some years ago. It’s not *guaranteed* to work with Kodachrome. And according to a friend who’s looked into it, the problem is with the cyan dye used in some versions of Kodachrome, and then some pictures having a very high density of that dye. But all the Kodachrome slides I’ve tried on my LS-2000 and then my 5000ED have worked fine.

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Fat Sam" wrote:

wrote:

Dear experts,

Recently, I bought the Nikon coolscan 5000
and did some scans.

The digical ICE did a fabulous job on the color
negatives and transparencies. There were no
flaws that I could see at all. Even though
there were flaws on the images.

Then I scanned some black and white negs.
And I saw soooo many flaws. Scratches,
dust, etc.

I may be over-simplifying things here, but did you scan the black and white ones in black and white mode?
If you scan them with the exact same settings you used for the colour ones, wouldn’t you get the same flaw free results?

No. ICE doesn’t work with most B&W films. ICE requires that the film be transparent to IR so it can find the (IR opaque or refracting) dust and scratches, but the silver remaining in B&W films is itself opaque to IR. You have to turn off ICE to scan B&W, at which point the dust and scratches show up in all their glory.

Aaaah.
I knew in the back of my mind that I was over-simplifying things.