Scanning paper with texture

<p>I'm scanning a print on roughly textured paper. With typical scanners, this leads to a well-known artifact: the angle of the scanner lamp casts a shadow on the texture, emphasizing it strongly.<br>

(Related posts: http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00Bshw, http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/004KYf)<br>

It's not possible to remove this artifact decently by post-filtering. You can reduce it, but it never really ends up looking any good; the damage is being done at scanning time, so that's what really needs to be fixed. Several people have mentioned scanners which are better at this.<br>

One person mentioned using one of Microtek's two-bulb scanners. That seems to be designed for removing scratches, though, by scanning twice with two different bulbs. If they can actually scan with both bulbs active at once, from opposite directions, it seems like it would reduce the shadowing a lot; but I don't know if these (or any other) scanners can work that way.<br>

A couple people also mentioned using scanners with a longer optical path--presumably so the lighting is more diffuse and doesn't cast sharp shadows. The only hardware mentioned was low-quality copiers, though; 6-bit color isn't very nice.<br>

Anyone know of a scanner along these lines, or that otherwise can handle this sort of thing (at a hobbyist price point)?</p>

 

<p>I have no idea what scanners are actually capable of, but I have had great success using studio lights and softboxes to light textured material. In absence of a good scanner, I have found photographing things to be a good alternative, and you can make the light do whatever you want, so show the textures as you want them.</p>

<p>The answer may lie more in the software than in the scanner hardware. Silverfast AI6 has a "descreening" algorithm which has worked well for me.....</p>

<p>You can scan once, then rescan with the paper turned at t 45* angle, then place the two into one file in PS. Using the different blend modes, merge them into a single image.</p>

<p>I've heard of using a camera for this, but that takes a lot of setup...<br>

I've tried various denoising; there's just too much destructive artifacting for decent results.<br>

Flipping and merging usually doesn't line up exactly--subtle nonlinear warping (probably from the page never really being completely flat, but I'm not positive) means not all parts of the image line up exactly, so I have to line up separate sectors of the image and blend it together. It's a hassle. It's the only way I've found so far that gives any significant improvement, though.<br>

If I can find a scanner better inherently suited for this, it'll be a lot less messy. The cheaper Microtek scanners sound pretty poor from reviews and specs, but there are mentions of the dual-lamp scanning even on the cheaper ones and it might be worth it for this special purpose if this actually works. I probably won't bother unless someone's already tried it, though.</p>