A smattering dust can really ruin a good scan. Watching the local film processing guy drop your neg on his putrid floor (imbecile!) can raise your blood pressure faster than you can say C41!
So I’ve been having problems with little smatterings of dust on most of my scans. And the scanner I use doesn’t have Digital ICE (it’s an old Minolta – keepin’ it real). After using a few of the available software-based anti-dust systems out there, I remained unconvinced. On the discussion boards, people were saying to do it by hand. For bigger bits, sure, but a billion tiny grains…?
I decided it was simple to do better. I wrote (in the loosest sense) a Photoshop action which reduces dust, but doesn’t remove all the grain from the photo.
It is does all this with a difference matte made from the original (dusty) image, and a version that has been run through the Photoshop Dust & Scratches filter. Old school like.
It aint fancy.
But it is fast and reliable. Also, it doesn’t get rid of all the dust (yep, paint it). But will remove all that cocaine you chopped up on your negatives the night before… Or if you are more like me, the baby powder that they seem to sprinkle all my negs with when they leave the lab.
See? The grain (mostly) survives. All that the matte is doing is revealing back to to D&S version of the image. Visually, it looks ok, and has probably saved me about a lifetime of manual healing brush time. Now you can get out there and shoot — post production is for the birds!
I make no guarantees this will work with your stuff. But have a go, it might.
