what is the best automatic dust and scratches reducer?

[wildestseas]

<p>I have a bunch of negatives that are unfortunately rather beat up from water damage and subsequent handling. Mostly it just looks like rather severe dust. For my color negatives it is no problem: Digital Ice does a beautiful job with the Nikon Coolscan 5000. Being that silver reflects infrared light, Digital Ice can't work its Fourier wonders on black and white silver emulsion film, so I'm left with lots of work to do with the spot remover in Photoshop CS4. The dust and scratches filter built in to Photoshop hardly does a thing with the 24 megapixel scans. There must be some third party application out there that fills this niche.<br /> Google searches don't bring up a whole lot besides scanners and tutorials for manual dust and scratches removal.<br /> Does anyone know of serious plug-ins to automate this otherwise arduous task?</p>

<p><img src="http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/3932/image31h.jpg" alt="" /></p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>I've actually got pretty good results with Photoshop's D&S filter, it's a matter of finessing the 2 variables: bring the first one (pixel diameter, something like that) up until the majority of dust/scratches disappears. You will likely be looking at extremely softened image. Then start raising the second variable (threshold?), until reasonable sharpness returns. Going from memory, I think the second variable should be roughly 3 times the first.</p>

<p>The other route is to apply <em>heavy</em> dust/scratch filter with no threshold, take a snapshot (in History pallet), return to your intital state, and then apply the the snapshot locally with History Brush. If your dust is predominantly dark (for example), set your brush to lighten mode, and vice versa.</p>

<p>The above, coupled with Healing Brush and Clone Stamp worked for me, for most scans. I would only resort to the D&S filter only method with severe cases. And save an untreated version first.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Since these negs are evidently really bad, the best course might be physical, THEN PS dust/scratch. </p>

<p>First, try wiping the negs with Tiger Cloth (Google it). It won't scratch. See if that works well enough to allow useful dust/scratch. If it doesn't, soak the negs in distilled water (filtered isn't good enough for scans) and Photoflo, then rinse repeatedly, then dip for seconds in water/Photoflo, then dry slowly in a damp, dust-free environment (eg your bathroom). The final photoflo should be about 3 drops per 500cc, no more.</p>

<p>I've done simple cleaning like that, getting good results with abused ancestral negs going back to the late 1800s. </p>

<p>If you browse what's left of the Polaroid site under "scanning" you may still find the dust/scratch filter they used for their Microtek scanner. Free. It seems bizarre vs PS, but its better for badly damaged film. However I prefer the physical cleaning route.</p>

 

[wildestseas]

<p>Thank you guys for your responses. I really appreciate it. I'll get a hold of some Tiger Cloth and Photoflo first and then try the software. I'll post my results here later.</p>