Railfan Technology > Photo Editing Question

I have been using InPixio as my editing program. Recently I have noticed that when scanning B&W images and some color shots it leaves out some detail in the shot. Really noticed it today while scanning this shot of the New Georgia RR down Atlanta Ga way in Jan 1993. In the shot of the NGA 3499 you can perhaps notice that a few letters in the name are blanked out/missing. I have noticed it in some numbers on some of the units I am scanning as well as something as small as the holes in the Flexicoil Truck Frames. They are just not there. Is this a common problem with some programs or perhaps just the InPixio Program? I like InPixio and have gotten pretty good with it, but this is quite obvious in certain shots.. Is there a fix for this issue or a cure? Is it in any other programs?  Thanks for any help. Ben 

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I had that problem with Epson Scan 2 when I used its dust remover because the dust remover had what is called "Digital Ice" in it. The problem was solved by not using the Epson 2 dust remover but using the one built into Photoshop or using the clone tool in Lightroom.
Bob

refarkas Wrote:
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> I had that problem with Epson Scan 2 when I used
> its dust remover because the dust remover had what
> is called "Digital Ice" in it. The problem was
> solved by not using the Epson 2 dust remover but
> using the one built into Photoshop or using the
> clone tool in Lightroom.
> Bob

Did some experimenting with this issue. Took/turned off the un sharp mask, changed from 16 bit grayscale to 8 bit grayscale and also turned off the dust removeal/sharpness functions with it. Seems to have resolved itself. Will go back and fool around with all the setting again to figure out exactly which one did the ytrick. I will keep in mind your solution by all means tho. Thanks. Ben

Yep, agree. We had that discussionon on TO about 10 or 15 years ago, turning off the scanner noise reduction brought things back to normal. In that case it was lettering on the side of the locomotive.
cool stuff thanks for posting.

Most likely culprit is the dust/scratch removal filter, which doesn't work on silver-base emulsions.

Overly aggressive dust removal and "smoothing" filters are very good at removing fine detail from images.  In some cases, as noted earlier, these are less effective dealing with direct film scans as well.