Not sure if anyone is still interested in this but, based on the suggestions above, I did some "tests" on the different Configuration options in Epson Scan. Where I netted out for Configuration with color negs was to use the ICM option with Adobe RGB as the target. (You need to download this from the Adobe site, it doesn't come with the Epson). I am really a novice so there may be dozens of reasons this is not the best approach, but I'll stick with it for a while. My biggest "aha" was with digital ice. I had never used it before but ran it as part of my tests. I was really surprised at how well it cleaned up the image I was working on. Yes it doubles or triples the time it takes to scan an image, but I would spend more time than that spot healing. And while the image is being scanned, I can be doing something else. Again, YMMV.

This was a very helpful thread and I appreciate everyone's time on presenting their POV.