How Deep Do You Dustbust 2021

[Michael Roberts]

I found this earlier thread and wondered if anyone has any new tips/suggestions to add after 13 years:

https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?34341-how-deep-do-you-dust-bust&highlight=dustbusting

The consensus in 2008 seemed to be:
1. use the spot healing brush
2. dustbust at 100%
3. for big prints from 8x10 film, e.g., print size of around 96" on the long side, dustbusting may take days rather than minutes or hours
4. to minimize time spent dustbusting, make sure you are not busting dust too small to see on the final print (maybe easier said than done when monitor resolution is much less than print resolution)

I am currently dustbusting 8x10 scans for mural sized prints (96" or so) and having the same issues discussed in this thread from 2008.

I tried the Filters>Noise>Dust&Scratches filter, but it will not work for me b/c it immediately lowers the sharpness of everything in the image. So, I am using the Spot Healing Brush.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to speed up dustbusting w/o sacrificing sharpness (other than #4, above)?

Thanks!
Michael

[martiansea]

I generally haven't been doing huge mural sized prints. I never thought about what zoom level I was using to remove dust, I just zoom in close enough to see it well; if it's a very big piece, this is sometimes less than 100%. If it is a very delicate area - say some emulsion flaw in a part of the image with alot of details I don't want to lose - I may be zoomed larger than 100% while working it. Usually it's spot healing, but sometimes it's a careful use (ie; very soft, not 100% opacity) of the Clone Stamp. Alot of this has to do with the quality of the grain structure, and I approach it all very pragmatically. I dusted a 4x5 scan a few days ago, and was pretty messy, but at it all cleaned up in maybe a half hour working really fast. I'm very nimble with this, having done it alot. End goal is always to have at least 98% of the flaws gone, regardless of image size, with minimal agitation of the grain structure. If the grain isn't sharp to begin with, then that means it was a poor scan and should be re-done completely if it's a "serious" piece.

I always do my dusting on a new empty raster layer that sits above the image layer. This makes it very easy to erase spots to try and do over if it doesn't look right. Also makes it very easy to do before/after comparison by switching it on and off. Nondestructive editing should be the default choice in this day and age.

[Pieter]

I clean up dust on scans of prints by adding a curves layer with an s-shaped curve. This makes the dust very apparent and I use the healing brush to clean up the original layer. As a precaution, I duplicate the original and later delete both that layer and the curves layer before saving.
216781

[martiansea]

As a precaution, I duplicate the original and later delete both that layer and the curves layer before saving.

You don't need to do this, though. Just make an empty raster layer and set the healing brush to "Sample Layer Below". This will potentially save alot of memory space; duplicating the original layer makes the file at least twice the size. This can make a difference when you're working on a huge scan and your RAM starts getting eaten up.

[jp]

Most useful thing is to prevent dust.. I run a air cleaner in the darkroom (keeps things clean when loading/unloading/developing) and keep film holders in antistatic ziplock bags when not in the camera.
Most dust I see is probably from the scanner.

[Jim Noel]

If I can't see the spot at arms length w/o magnifiers, etc, I don't bother with it. There was a time when I wore +10 magnifiers to spot , but decided that was ridiculous.

[Tin Can]

Gotta agree

Perfection is inauthentic


If I can't see the spot at arms length w/o magnifiers, etc, I don't bother with it. There was a time when I wore +10 magnifiers to spot , but decided that was ridiculous.

[bob carnie]

I prefer to do initial dust busting at an average size, so generally it is below 100% .... Once its determined final print size I will then do final dusting at that size. I use the healing and clone brush, I use dust and scratches for out of focus areas but never for areas that are sharp in the image.
As said above always on a layer .


I am inclined to think that there is no simple fix and therefore we spend time when required taking out the dust.

[Michael Roberts]

If the grain isn't sharp to begin with, then that means it was a poor scan and should be re-done completely if it's a "serious" piece.

Not here to fuck spiders;)

https://youtu.be/wpAS3IHkzPc (at 3:05)

[Michael Roberts]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions!

[megapickle1]

I know, I am an idiot. But I do dust removal at 200 %. I do it from the top to the bottom and from left to right side. I have a scale od 1 cm painted on the bottom of my monitor and slide the neg./scan. A 4x5 capture take about 4 hours, but it is very effective.

[Tin Can]

Perhaps some want an AI Program that could seek and destroy dust

[SergeyT]

My scans from 4x5 are 40x50 inch at 300 dpi, file size 1Gb. For an 8x10 that would translate into 80x100 inch and 4Gb, so it is apples to apples...
Cleanup in PS at a 100% view with a combination of healing brush or clone brush takes about 20-30 mins depending on the image content. And I remove every spec that I see. I don't have many to begin with because most of it is taken care of before scanning...
Before each scanning session my work table surface is cleaned up with a wet sponge, then dry lint free cloth and then covered by a layer of lint free paper (that I save and reuse)
In case of a flat-bed scanner the base glass goes on top of that layer of paper for mounting...I also put my just scanned films onto that layer of paper to dry.
- Cleanup the drum or base glass
- Attach a sheet of mylar along one edge keeping a sheet of overlay paper underneath the mylar
- Holding by free opposite end, lift up both mylar and overlay from the drum or glass
- Blow off dust from the drum or glass surface underneath the mylar
My film is lab processed and comes in sleeves.
Each sheet :
- take it from sleeve
- while holding it between 2 fingers and bending slightly outwards, blow off dust from both surfaces using canned gas (wholesales prices are not bad and a can lasts me for 30-60 sheets)
- blow off the dust from drum (glass) again
- apply mounting fluid to the drum, glass
- put the film onto the drum, glass ( film surfaces, once taken from the sleeve , never touch anything but drum or base glass)
- remove the overlay paper from the mylar
- blow off dust from the "inner" surface of mylar, directionally from side to side instead of top to bottom as all that stuff will settle on the film down below.
- apply mounting fluid onto the film surface
- roll mylar over and seal
- cleanup the outer mylar surface
- Mount the drum or base glass into the scanner
- Final dust blow off from the surfaces
- Scan

[Christopher Campbell]

I'm digitizing several hundred frames of 35mm transparency and color negative film from the early 1990s when I studied with the painter Joan Mitchell in Vétheuil, France. I'm making the digital copies using a system I built from a wall-mounted column, an Arca-Swiss M-two (MF) camera, and a Rodenstock HR Digaron Macro 5.6/105 lens. The digital back is the Phase One IQ3 100MP Trichromatic, so this yields a 2:3 aspect ratio TIFF file (500+ MB) that measures about 7580 x 11,370 pixels. I'm doing the basic editing in Adobe Lightroom, with the help of the Negative Lab Pro plug-in for inverting color negatives. After editing, I export a TIFF to Photoshop, where I typically run LaserSoft's SRDx plug-in on a retouching layer. This Photoshop plug-in has very finely-grained controls for intensity and tile size, and can be set to identify dark defects (in positives), or light defects (in negatives). It also has a pen tool that can be used to isolate the most problematic areas, such as skies. SRDx will often deal with 75% or more of the defects in a smooth area, and I then zoom in to 100% and use the Spot Healing Brush to deal with most of the rest of the small problems. However, I am almost exclusively dealing with defects in the physical film, not dust, because before digitizing/scanning, I clean the film — on a sheet of glass — by rolling across both front and back with a 150mm wide Teknek elastomer hand roller. These are used to clean acrylic for face-mounting, and for cleaning PCB materials, and they are simply amazing: removing virtually every particle down to 0.1 microns, so that I almost never see a dust particle. My understanding is that the static charge on particles below 5 microns is sufficiently great that air (vacuumed or blown) can't dislodge them, and you have to use a charge that is larger than the one on the particle to lift it away. DryTac also sells the SDI DRS roller, which is similar, and there are now cheap copies on eBay. I have not tested the cheap Chinese copies on film.

[jmdavis]

I thought that this was going to be a conversation concerning cleaning film holders, camera interiors, and limiting the dust in the darkroom on drying negatives. Ah well.

My high end scanning days were over two decades ago. But I found avoiding dust to be a very good use of time.