Any body got any tips for quick spotting of scans

[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.