>> I was hoping, but not expecting, for a simple scanner trick but I understand the problem and I have to setup all the camera equipment. <<
Bertho, for those of us with only a flatbed...what to do? Richard - does a drum scanners focused spot lightsource and drum mounting overcome the white spot problem on textured reflective contone photo prints? The directional lightsource of the flatbed scanner and is a big problem... There are two basic answers to this problem if you only have a flatbed and Photoshop with no option to shoot a copy shot. i) Scan once, attempting to place the longest edge perfectly against the scanners ruler edge. Rotate the original 180 degrees and scan again...or experiment with 90 degrees and scan again. Using the same scanning settings so as not to have auto colour difference issues between scans etc. The key is to scan as straight as possible on both scans. This changes the lightsource/scan angle relative to the original... In Photoshop, flip/rotate etc the second scan to match the first. Layer the two files together. Change the upper layer to difference blend mode to align the two images. A black image = perfect registration, which is not likely. You may need to dupe the layer and mask sections and fudge the other dupes into different positions etc to do this. Or you may have to transform/rotate/scale-distort the second scan a little etc. When happy change from difference blend to DARKEN layer blend mode and then toggle the view of the layer on/off to see if you are happy. ii) This only uses one scan. A duped layer is filtered to remove the spots without damaging the detail too much. This could be grain reduction actions or plugs/applications dedicated to noise removal (Neat Image, Noise Ninja etc). This process layer is blended in darken mode to remove the spots. One can add layer masks and or blend if layer sliders etc to restrict the edits. There are many possibilities and variations of the theme. Another option is to do a second scan at the same physical rotation as the first, this time only changing the software settings to use DECREE and then to layer/blend/mask as above. As darken blend mode only alters lower pixels which are lighter than the upper layer one gets the best blend of the lesser quality noise processed layer into the original sharp scan. In effect it is spotting out each individual spot. One may also wish to see what pulling a darken midtone or darken shadow endpoint level/curve on the darken blend layer does... This technique can also be used in Lighten blend mode to reduce dark spots on light backgrounds. This is a good way to retain maximum quality with the least manual work, but it is more for the special image than a production job of many scans. One final option may be to scan at a higher resolution and at the original physical size/magnification and then to resample down smaller to the final print size/resolution as the first step. This may help reduce the noise/dust and save you work/time...but will not result in the best 'raw' data as the above methods which take more time and effort. Some similar ideas are presented here: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/IT_scanningspotting.html Regards, Stephen Marsh. =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
