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Digital Ice and similar dust and scratch cleanup tools for scanning color negative and non-Kodachrome slides was a boon for those looking to archive/digitize their film files. This software-hardware solution worked with numerous scanners by isolating the offending dust and scratches on a separate infrared channel that it then dumped when the final scan was made.
The only problem was that because of the distinct nature of their emulsions, black-and-white negatives and specifically Kodachrome slides could not benefit from this procedure. This made cleanup of these images a particularly laborious task that required patience, skill and select image editing programs.
That’s all changed with a new breakthrough in scanning technology from LaserSoft Imaging called SRDx, which can work with scanners without the need for installed IR-channel capability. SRDx, which comes in SilverFast’s Ai Studio 8 scanner software, is a dust and scratch removal clean-up tool for black-and-white negatives and Kodachrome.
The company is rigorous in their updates and is always developing new tools for making quality scans from any format the scanner can handle.
Overall, SilverFast scan software works on a quite logical basis, with tools that follow the workflow from left to right and top to bottom. At first, the software can be daunting, but the company has numerous videos and tutorials available on their site, as well as a training offering.
The overall scan procedure is not within the purview of this article, but simply stated you set the film type, desired resolution (which will depend on your scanner capabilities), set up contrast, brightness, saturation for color and tonal relationship for black-and-whites etc. using the various and sophisticated tools provided.
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