ICE scans image loss

[invisibleflash]

Many times ICE scanning technology works fine, you just have to test it. Other times there is a big loss in IQ.

Here is an example of a glass stereo slide that showed lots of image loss.


Below: Scan with no ICE (It had some spotting done to it, so examples are not for dust spotting they are for image loss from ICE. I don't have the original slide handy to rescan with no spotting.)

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Below scan with ICE

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You may not be able to see it, but the fabric they are sitting on shows lots of loss as well as eyebrow loss on girl on right. (Don't know why one uploaded as portrait, both are landscape format.)

I put up on them Internet Archive so you can download higher res images.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=ICE%20Teoli

Epson ICE works good for some images. I have examples, but didn't put link as it has an ad for one of my books. As I said, TEST.

[koraks]

Are the originals color negatives or transparencies? Keep in mind that ICE was never intended to work with silver images, so e.g. b&w negatives.

[Corran]

As koraks said, ICE doesn't work with traditional b&w negatives. Looks like you were scanning glass plates, so, same issue. This is due to how ICE works, using infrared light. I think Epson doesn't actually have ICE, but instead a generic dust removal filter that may or may not work well. I tried it a couple times back when I was using a V700 and it didn't really work well. ICE on my old Nikon Coolscan worked awesome, for color negative/slides or chromogenic b&w films.

[koraks]

As I understand, Epson has two ICE implementations: actual ICE, and 'ICE Lite'. ICE is a hardware implementation, which suggests that it uses IR or another non-visible channel for dust/damage detection. ICE Lite is a purely software implementation that apparently uses AI to detect defects and fix them. I have rarely used ICE on my Epson 4990 because it takes a lot longer to scan - and also because I mostly (if I scan at all) scan B&W materials. In principle, ICE Lite should also work with B&W, but I doubt it's very effective. Perhaps that's the problem here; IIRC, the Epson software automatically switches to ICE Lite if any B&W material or a reflective scan mode is selected.

[Doug Fisher]

Epson has regular ICE that is a hardware implementation. It also has a dust and scratch software implementation but that is not related to ICE and usually not as effective/accurate. The Nikon 9000 has the ICE Pro (I think that is the version name) that can do color slides like Kodachrome.

Doug

[invisibleflash]

Are the originals color negatives or transparencies? Keep in mind that ICE was never intended to work with silver images, so e.g. b&w negatives.

Glass plate stereo slides

I tried it on a 35mm color slide and it worked good. No image loss, 98% dust removal. Must be an individual type of thing.

[jim10219]

I’ve never had luck with ICE on my Epson 4990. I still have to clean up the negative by hand in software and it does seem to effect the resolution a little bit. It would probably be fine for posting photos online, but I’m too picky to use it for prints. They’re right though in that it won’t work for B&W film.