How remove thin white scratches?

What is the best way to remove scratches (those long thin white kind) on 35mm black and white negative scans?

I can deal with the white spots but, these long thin scratches are very hard to remove without hiding the retouch area effectively. Really, impossible.

Negs were scanned on a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 using the included Nikon Scan 4 (yes, it does work fine on OSX 10.6.6 and earlier versions but you have to remove a certain file after install and restart).

I've been doing spot removal right in Aperture and for white or dark specks, spots, and splats it is so easy and does a good job. I also have PS CS5 but, have not gotten into it that much – yet. I can open the retouched Aperture version directly in PS, fix the scratches, and return to Aperture if needed.

I tried painting the scratches out on screen with my 00000 brush but, all the retouching jars have dried out.
Thanks!

If you can post an image it would help?
--
Tom
When my bones turn to dust,
and if my CD's didn't rust,
future generations will see my photos
and think that I was nuts.

Perhaps a job for 'content aware fill' in CS5?
--
Regards,
****

Those scratches are probably on the base side of the negative. Back in the day when we printed from negatives we could remedy most of those type of scratches by a liberal application of "nose grease" which is the oil/grease from the side of your nose. I would recommend trying and re scanning and if that dosn't work then use the clone/rubber stamp tool or the healing brush.

Try the free Polaroid Dust and Scratch Remover plugin. It can be found about 3/4 way down the page at this link: http://thesybersite.com/minolta/software/index.htm

The last time I tried it, this link worked just fine.

Regards....Allen

"Nose grease" That's the first thing I thought of too. Might not remember what I did yesterday, but it seems some of the old tricks are still sticking. The way this "cure" works is that the "grease" fills in the tiny scratches making them invisible. Kind of how vehicle windshield nicks are treated today with clear epoxy.

Retouch cures for removing wires in photos might be searched for as it would pose a similar challenge.

Mark
--

I have that PDSR and gave it a quick shot but, it missed 99% of these long scratches. I'll fiddle with the controls and try again.

There are companies that sell kits that let you oil your negatives for scanning. This is like a wet drum scanner or the old nose oil trick but I think it can be used in the Nikon scanners.

However, I am reluctant to put oil, from my nose or from other sources on the neg and in the scanner. Especially in the scanner which is no longer made; I've not used as much as I would like too and; cost me a pretty penny. I hope to get at least another 20 years out of her.

This one is particularly challenging because the dog is white and hairy! The main trouble scratch lines are near the top right and top left. There is also one or two on his cheek. The negative scratches are nice slightly curved lines while the fur is wavy. Exception: His whiskers!

On a full size version of the image for editing, these lines are an issue in this image. At this size and on LCD screens, you may think it is not an issue, but it is. Also, I have plenty more B&W negatives that have scratches which I will need to address.

Tom C said:

If you can post an image it would help?

Click to expand...

There are lots of ways and the healing brush should do just fine... But...for fun I duplicated the background... set it's layer mode to darken... clicked on the move tool... then with the arrow keys I offset a few pixels both horizontal and vertical.

Then I hid all with a mask and with a small brush stroked over the fine scratches.

Butch

Yes, it does not always work, but I thought it would be worth a try.....especially since the plugin is free.

Regards...Allen

Nice trick, Butch. I would not have thought to do this, but it does work quite well.

Regards....Allen

JMCO said:

There are companies that sell kits that let you oil your negatives for scanning. This is like a wet drum scanner or the old nose oil trick but I think it can be used in the Nikon scanners.

However, I am reluctant to put oil, from my nose or from other sources on the neg and in the scanner. Especially in the scanner which is no longer made; I've not used as much as I would like too and; cost me a pretty penny. I hope to get at least another 20 years out of her.

Click to expand...

At least one company:
http://scanscience.com/Pages/lumina.html

Sells a kit that involves a non oily fluid. I've used it after reading an article in Photo Technique magazine about their system. It works quite well to remove fine scratches and "pepper specks" on my slides - about as good as Digital ICE without the artifacts that can sometimes appear. The fluid evaporates after a couple of minutes of exposure to air and doesn't leave spots.

However, the procedure to scan a frame is APITA.

You squirt a little of the liquid onto a glass plate, place the single frame onto a the liquid. Squirt another few drops onto the film. Cover with a clear plastic. Squegee to remove any air bubbles. Then insert this "sandwich" into the scanner and presto, a near drumlike scan. After being faced with the idea of doing a few thousand more of these, I opted to buy a used Imacon Flextight instead.
--
Robert

I've scanned a few old prints that the owner had shuffling around in a shoebox and those had similar fine line scratches on them.

The way I went about removing them was by selecting the spot heal brush from the tools palette. I adjusted the diameter to be just slightly wider than the scratch.

Then working in short lengths, I left clicked at the start of the scratch, and while holding the shift key down, I left clicked some distance further along the length of the scratch. The spot heal process looked at the pixels surrounding the scratch and filled the scratch in. Then I repeated for the rest of the length.

I wouldn't try to fix the entire length at once since some scratches might have a curve in them.

Next time, I'll try the suggestion of duplicating and shifting proposed by an earller post. Sounds like a way to work smarter, not harder.
--
Robert

170% view and the heal command, sometimes clone in tricky situations around high contrast areas.

JMCO said:

What is the best way to remove scratches (those long thin white kind) on 35mm black and white negative scans?

I can deal with the white spots but, these long thin scratches are very hard to remove without hiding the retouch area effectively. Really, impossible.

Click to expand...

There's several techniques to do them quite invisibly. "Healing" generally isn't one, it's just sort of "automated cloning". There are programs that do what's called "inpainting", looking at the area all around the flaw, and trying to "grow" it closed from the edges inward. Newer Photoshop versions (CS4 and 5) actually can do this, but...

The problem is identifying the flaw. As you've already learned with PhotoShop, manually marking the flaws in a way that the healing algorithms work well is hard.

Automatically trying to find every scratch is also hard (like the Polaroid software). There are a couple of good programs that are "semi-automatic", you mark what needs to be healed in a way that tells the program "something in this area needs to be fixed", instead of Photoshop style "fix this".

I typically use Helicon Filter for this, but I use computers, not Macs.

Akvis Retoucher is a good semi-automatic fixer that has both a computer and a Mac version.

http://akvis.com/en/retoucher/index.php

Good luck.

--
Rahon Klavanian 1912-2008.

Armenian genocide survivor, amazing cook, scrabble master, and loving grandmother. You will be missed.

Ciao! Joseph

http://www.swissarmyfork.com