Cleaning Damage

Uncleaned images

FIGURE 1 Many scanned images need cleaning, either because of dirt on the film or dust within the scanner itself.

There are ways to minimise the cleaning that is needed, but even with a strict cleaning regime in place when scanning it is still usual to do some cleaning in Photoshop on the image. The image on the left, above, has not been cleaned at any stage of the scanning process, showing a hair and a cloud of small dirt particles. When checking an image it is best to set the view to 100% in Photoshop, even though this means having to scroll around the file.  If the dirt can not be seen at 100%, but you have to zoom up to 200% or more to see any evidence, then there is no need to worry as it will be buried in any subsequent use.

Badly cleaned images

FIGURE 2 There are a number of ways to carry out cleaning, but sometimes shortcuts are taken which result in image damage. On the right, a blur brush was used that resulted in unnaturaly smooth patches that do not blend in with the background.