Digital BW, The Print

I'll post this in the group since it might be of interest to others:

I use a Canon CanoScan FS4000US scanner. You could have a copy of my
action, but there's not much to it, and it might be specific for my
scanner, so here's the procedure instead:

1. Scan the image as 64bit RGBI TIFF in Vuescan. This produces a 48 bit
image with an additional 16bit IR channel.

2. Select IR channel in photoshop.

3. Apply Auto levels without clipping.

4. With my scanner the lighter part of the histogram contains excessive
noise and streaks with a ghostlike copy of the image. Clip this
information by setting the white point in levels. For me that's about
185.

5. Invert the channel.

6. Convert to 8bit.

7. Go back to RGB/Grayscale channel and load a selection from the IR
channel.

8. Use the Patch tool in 'Source' mode and drag the selection to a
dust-free part of the image.

That's it!


A couple of things:

- You might want to expand the selection by 3-5 pixels before applying
dust removal

- Step 8 is not perfect and could be replaced by another dust removal
procedure. When you drag the selection using the patch tool you
sometimes end up using data from a part of the image that's too
different resulting in weird artifacts. If you find something that works
better, please let me know. Thanks!


--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no