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Need help getting rid of grain in scan


phc

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I've got a hi-rez scan of a B&W neg that appears very grainy in PhotoShop. It's a professional scan from a TMZ P3200 neg.

 

Does anyone know any PhotoShop tricks to minimise the grain? I like the picture and it's going in a book, but I need to get the grain level down without it looking post-processed.

 

Any help gratefully received!

 

Cheers, P.

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I can't think of anything to tame the grains in Photoshop. I will personally shoot ISO 3200 for the reason that "I want grains". But otherwise if I don't want it conspicuous, I will shot a 3200 ISO in 6x6. The grains is the foundation of your film image, it's best to control it durring developing.

 

In most cases, if I shot at high ISO in 35mm, will develop the media in Microphen or Acufine. It can reduce your grain size into half to deliver a sharper and less flat image. I will also be gentle in the agitation durring the developing process. I can make an ISO 100 look ISO 6400 just in rough agitation alone. Developers are cheap and mostly water when diluted.

 

I only scan high resolution for my work, that is why again; I recomend that you do your own developing. It is easy, fun, and you have more control over your results. Just send it out for scanning.

 

Cheers,

-Ron

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I don't suppose the Pro who scanned it left the ICE filter on, did he? Just a thought.

 

Any 3200 ASA film is going to be grainy - I assume that there was a very pressing reason why you had to go to such lengths to get your shot?

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The shot is one of those moments... I had to use what I had in my hand, which was an M6 with TMZ.

 

I'm trying out a few plug-in filters now. They're expensive though!

 

Here's a sample of the image concerned, at 1:1

 

barb%20sample.jpg

 

*** CAN'T GET THE IMAGE TO SHOW***

 

barb%20sample.jpg

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Is it possible to have it rescanned? If so you have options, I used to do a lot of high-end scanning and may be able to offer some suggestions. If not I'm sure there're some photoshop nuts on here or the digital forum who might have some tricks up their sleeves.

 

Ideally though you'd want to scan again, however it won't produce miracles, as previous posts mentioned TMZ 3200 is a very grainy film!

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The shot is one of those moments... I had to use what I had in my hand, which was an M6 with TMZ.

 

I'm trying out a few plug-in filters now. They're expensive though!

 

I would suggest Noise Ninja if you want the best - if you just want to get by, the PS noise reduction might be ok; in both cases, just duplicate your image layer and apply the filter there, then mask it off accordingly - not having seen your image I cannot say more, but generally you don't want the noise filter applied to the whole of the pic in the same amount :D

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How large in pixels is the original image? You are going to find that larger size scans will show "grain" development and it will disappear somewhat (or entirely) in resizing down to the print size. If that is 240x240 crop of the 100% view and the original is three, four, five, seven thousand wide then it looks pretty good to me and you may even introduce other proplems if you try to address it. Probably the best idea if you have trouble working with the original size, is to determine the physical size you need for the book, resample down to that size, then start your editing routine.

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I would download and try AlienSkin's 'Exposure' plug in

 

You can choose the B&W film effect you want from several presets, and customize if you want

 

There is a noise filter in PS, it's there among the unsharp mask and sharpening filters

 

I really like Neat Image for this task.

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