Digital BW, The Print

In my humble opinion, the best digital retouching tool is Photo 
Impact - I'm still using v6.0.  The dust and scratch removal is on a 
local basis, so it is very, very fast.  Wife and I have restored over 
1400 scans of 11x14 A. Aubrey Bodine photographs 
(www.AAubreyBodine.com) - same problem you have, just bigger real 
estate per image.  PS has no retouching tools that I have been able 
to determine do the same task as quickly or painlessly.  This type of 
retouching - dust removal in particular - should not be a global tool 
or requiring masking.  In PhotoImpact, just set the noise removal 
tool's brush to the size and shape you need and whisk it across the 
dust.  They disappear as if blown off the screen.  Very cool.  I 
remove scratches by using the lasso tool to grab a bit of image that 
is similar in tone/grain as the defect and drag it over the defect.  
Kind of like the clone tool, but much more invisible as a repair.  my 
2 cents.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "wwodets" 
<odets@c...> wrote:
> I am scanning 35mm negatives with a Nikon 5000.  Though the film is 
> squeaky clean to the eye, the scanned images are filled with spots 
> and linear scratches.  At 100% view, panel by panel (page 
> down/control-page down) I am spending three to four hours spotting 
> these images.  The healing brush is a tremendous advantage, though 
on 
> this dual XEON computer with 1 gig of ram it is rather slow, 
> requiring hesitation between spots to allow the image to update.  
> I've tried spotting at a 50% view and it just isn't good enough 
> (spots come back to haunt you, particularly after sharpening) 
though 
> it's much faster.  
> 
> A few other related issues:
> 
> Digital ICe doesn't work and the BW film, but might it work on the 
XP-
> 1 I used later in my career?
> 
> I am doing noise reduction (Neat Image) before spotting and 
> sharpening much later in the flow.
> 
> Any experience or thoughts on all this?
> 
> Thanks,
> Walt