Any body got any tips for quick spotting of scans

[Gary Tarbert]

Hi one of the time consuming tasks i find is after scanning ,Spotting and cleaning dust marks etc off the scan seems to take forever, I know really fastidious cleaning of the original helps , But any body got a better technique than me , I just use a small brush and the healing tool . Cheers Gary

[mdarnton]

A Wacom tablet is less fatiguing for me. I hardly use it otherwise, but for spotting. . . .

[Adamphotoman]

I second the Wacom and the healing brush. Shortcut J. The content aware brush is much improved in CS6 and CC

[jp]

I think the epson scanner attracts dust with it's plastic and air flow caused by open/closing the lid. If you can run an air cleaner nearby, it helps. If you can keep the scanner covered in some antistatic covering that helps too.

[Noah A]

Aside from what everyone else has mentioned, I often use a curves adjustment layer to temporarily modify the brightness and contrast of an area to help see those darn dust spots. This is especially helpful in, say, an overcast sky, where the spots can be difficult to see on the monitor but where they'll stick out like a sore thumb in a print. So I'll darken and pump up the contrast. It makes spotting the sky much faster.

Also, my drum scans are much cleaner than epson or hasselblad/imacon scans. So perhaps even on an Epson, wet mounting might be worthwhile. I only use my epson for proofs so I don't spot them.

[Jmarmck]

I think the epson scanner attracts dust with it's plastic and air flow caused by open/closing the lid. If you can run an air cleaner nearby, it helps. If you can keep the scanner covered in some antistatic covering that helps too.

Ya got that right. I have detritus under the glass. :mad:
Dunno what to say to the OP but healing brush and clone stamp with a diffuse edge. It takes however long it takes. I can spend a couple hours on an initial run if the scan is really dirty. I always give it a second pass if I use any sharpening or unmask tools.

[fishbulb]

agree with the other tips here, especially noah's temporary curves adjustment layer for skies. here's what i do for reducing dust issues:

1) wet mounting. my issues with dust and scratches were reduced by 90% versus dry flatbed scanning.

2) for manual editing, photoshop's content-aware healing brush is where it's at. if that doesn't work, time for clone stamp. with a wet mounted 4x5, i spend maybe 10 minutes or less on manual spot removal.

3) photoshop's "dust and scratches" filter can be used to automatically detect dust and remove it, however, it takes some skill to get it set up. it is great if you are scanning a bunch of low-importance stuff that you just need to archive, and you don't want to work on every file with individually spot healing. you can figure out what setting works for the type of film, then create a batch action and run it on all the files. good for archiving old 35mm film for example.

[Ken Lee]

1) Another suggestion is to view the image at 100% size - or larger. It's easier to see what you're doing and do a good job.

2) If you work with a Mac you get this automatically, but on other operating systems you should use a mouse or track pad which supports easy vertical - and horizontal - scrolling. It's much faster than using the scroll-bar every time you want to move to the next part of the image.

[Bruce Watson]

Hi one of the time consuming tasks i find is after scanning ,Spotting and cleaning dust marks etc off the scan seems to take forever, I know really fastidious cleaning of the original helps...

That's not the only thing that helps. You have to declare war on dust and dirt. That means the entire process, from loading your film holders on. (Hint: never let your holders get dirty, as in never let them touch any surface other than your camera back, your hand, or the inside of a zip-lock bag. Never set a film holder down on anything in the field. Never carry them not inside a zip-lock bag.) It means mixing chems. with steam distilled water only. It means diluting developer, stop, fixer with steam distilled water only. It means using developer one shot. And stop. And fix. Yes, use fixer one shot only with film; you'll be amazed at the amount of tiny silver particles that come out with a single use of fixer, that then can deposit on the next run of film. It means giving a final rinse to your graduates, trays, tanks, with steam distilled water when you are finished cleaning them after a session. It means storing your graduates, trays, tanks, upside down so that dust can't fall into them between uses. All these things matter.

The biggie is your darkroom has to be spotless. Everything has to be cleaned regularly. That includes the ceiling, the walls, under the shelves (you'll be amazed how much dust accumulates on the underside of shelves). Keep an air cleaner running in the darkroom 24x7. You do this, and hanging LF film to dry will be much more dust free.

You do this, and you'll find out just how much your scanner matters to dust and dirt in your scans. Hint: no so much.

All this said, you'll never get rid of all the dust and dirt. But you can get rid of 90%. But it takes a serious effort through your entire workflow, not just cleaning the film before you scan it. Just sayin'.

[jp]

I do some of what Bruce recommends and it has worked.
Pink antistatic bags for film holders unless they are in the camera or being loaded/unloaded in the darkroom.
I don't distilled rinse darkroom containers or store them upside down, but I do run an air cleaner in the darkroom which is the biggest means of keeping things dust free in there. My developer is one-shot by design and I use distilled to mix up fix, but do re-use it. Fixer can be filtered if it gets floaties and still has plenty of strength left. As an experiment, filtering results would support Bruce's choice, but I don't mind re-using it.
As such, I can make optical prints with rare dust issues. But the scanner is where the dust is for me as it's outside the darkroom. I only spend a couple minutes cleaning dust with the healing tool.

Don't EVER carry a wet negative from the darkroom, through the house, to the scanner. I have learned this.
It will pick up stuff like crazy especially if you have pets. File or protect the negatives in the darkroom before transporting them to the scanner, even if it's a short walk.

[Bruce Watson]

Fixer can be filtered if it gets floaties and still has plenty of strength left. As an experiment, filtering results would support Bruce's choice, but I don't mind re-using it.

Ah, yes. This points out the relevance of workflow. I was processing 5x4 sheets so that I could make big prints (125x100 cm). Drum scanning the film.

What's the relevance? I could clearly see, and therefore had to retouch out, tiny little white spots. Turned out that these were caused by metallic silver from the fixing bath. I couldn't filter them out, they were too small.

What confused me was that some film batches had these, and some didn't. I finally pinned it down to the first use of the fixer was clean, and the second use resulted in these tiny white spots. When I went to one-shot fixer use, they went away completely from all film. So I'm pretty sure I know what they were and where they came from.

All that said, if you aren't going for enlargements over 10x, you're not likely to see them anyway. And if you aren't drum scanning, you aren't likely to see them either. But I was doing both.

Finally, I was processing using a Jobo 3010 tank. Which means I was using very low volumes of chemicals. Which means that using the fixer one-shot cost me very little. Yet another consideration.

All I'm really trying to say (even if I'm not being very articulate) is that you have to optimize your workflow to keep dust and dirt away from your film, from start to finish. How much you have to do is dictated by your workflow and your desire to avoid spotting.

[fishbulb]

Interesting! I see those white spots in my drum scans sometimes and I was wondering what they were. Although I use new fixer every time. They might be from reusing the stop bath though.

[chacabuco]

I have a home made air cleaner (box fan with a furnace filter taped on it) always running for 20 minutes before a scanning session as well as a compressor with a Top - Gun Ionizing gun attached to it which helps. Still there is always dust.

A trick I often use is to make a duplicate layer of your background, apply a pretty aggressive dust and scratches filter until most of your dust is gone in the preview. Take a history snapshot of your current view (with the d+S filter on) then go back one step in your history. Choose the snapshot you created, usually snapshot 1, and switch to the history brush, setting the mode to Darken. Now paint out your dust. Works really well for large expanses of sky or water, but can be effective in other places as well. Just takes some fiddling with the filter.

[Jmarmck]

Thanks for that!

[Gary Tarbert]

I am glad i asked this question lots of great tips i am doing a scanning session early next week so the advice by all has been fantastic, Some things suggested i already do such as view at 100% , The only difference is i do a run at 50% first then a final check at 100% . The dust and scratches method mentioned by chacabuco i have seen done before at a conference i went to. But do you think i could find the notes . The guy was a digi shooter and was using the technique only for noise suppression but it looks the same .Cheers Gary

[mdarnton]

I was spotting a big one today and thought of another tip. Using my Wacom, I keep the other hand on the key for selecting the healing-from location, and the other on the arrow keys. I spot in bands, top to bottom, over one band and bottom to top, etc. That way I make sure all the territory is scanned in orderly fashion. I do my healing in FastStone, a program I really like for simple things, then switch to Photoshop if more complex actions are needed.