retouching software for haltones

<p>I've been assigned a large project to copy a bunch of historical halftones (newspaper dot patterns) which will be enlarged for wall art at the newly restored building that is the subject of the images The ideal result will require retouching to eliminate the dot pattern.<br>

Does anyone know of a program with a feature to automatically do this kind of retouching?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>Tim</p>

<p>Unfortunately, if you are going to be enlarging the images substantially, even a slightly imperfect removal of the pattern will stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. I have seen several displays such as you describe where absolutely no attempt was made to remove the half tone pattern from the old source material, and it looked quite fine, almost giving it a sort of Roy Lichtenstein "goes antique" look. ;-)</p>

<p>Scanning software often comes with some type of half-tone / line screen removal option. Noise reduction software like Neat Image sometimes also does a reasonable job. However, the best approach is to use a Fourier transform approach such as:<br>

http://home.planet.nl/~ber03728/4N6site/improc/fftplugin/howto.htm</p>

<p>There are several other programs like this floating around. Just Google {fft plugin halftone}. When I get back to my Photoshop computer late tonight, I'll see which other ones I've tried and let you know.</p>

<p>In these programs, you need to erase the regular pattern of dots in the Fourier domain, leaving as much of the random speckle pattern untouched as possible. </p>

<p>In addition, to the above program, scientific image processing programs such as NIH's Image J, Matlab, and Mathematica work very well at this, however, there is a steep learning curve to these.</p>

<p>That being said, I would urge you to consider not trying to obscure the pattern.</p>

<p>Cheers,</p>

<p>Tom M</p>