Have you ever scanned an old strip of film or slide and been disappointed with the results? Dust and scratches can make your photos look faded and aged. But there is a solution! Digital ICE is a technology that helps to remove dust and scratches from scanned images. In this blog post, we will discuss what Digital ICE is, how it works, and why you should use it, or VueScan’s replacement.
Digital ICE is a technology that helps to improve the quality of images by removing defects such as scratches and dust. The technology was developed in the 1960s and early 1970s by Kodak’s Austin Development Center. Digital ICE is a patent encumbered process that is licensed to many scanner software makers.
Digital ICE technology is a scanning technique that uses two different light sources to find dust and scratches on an image. One is a regular three color LED and the other is an infrared LED. The infrared lamp finds dust and scratches on the image. Then, the image can be corrected with a combination of the information from the infrared channel and the visible light channels to cover up the scratches and dust so they are not visible in the final image.
One of the great advantages of Digital ICE is that it is an automatic process. Once you turn it on, it will quickly detect and remove many scratches and dust from your films or slides. This can save you a lot of time and effort, particularly if you have a large collection of films or slides. In addition, Digital ICE can often restore films or slides that were previously thought to be unusable. As a result, it is an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to preserve their memories in the best possible way.
One of the disadvantages of Digital ICE is that it can slow down the scanning process. In order to use Digital ICE, the scanner must make an extra pass over the image after the initial scan where the Infrared lamp is turned on. This can add a significant amount of time to the scanning process, especially if you are scanning at a high resolution. For some users, the added time may be worth it in order to get a clean image. However, others may prefer to skip this step in order to save time. Ultimately, it is up to each individual user to decide whether or not to use Digital ICE.
This process can be greatly accelerated by using an image editor such as Photoshop. With Photoshop, you can quickly repair small areas of damage without having to scan the entire image using Digital ICE. This can save a great deal of time, especially if you have a large number of images to scan. Of course, this approach does have its drawbacks. First, it requires a bit of extra work up front. Second, it may not be possible to completely repair all the damage to an image using Photoshop. However, for many people, the benefits of this approach outweigh the drawbacks.
Does VueScan contain Digital ICE?
VueScan has a feature called Infrared Clean that solves the same problem as Digital ICE. But it does not use the same patent/trademark encumbered issues that Digital ICE has that requires licensing the technology. We think our implementation is faster and performs better than Digital ICE. We use the same infrared scanning as the other scanner vendor’s software does, but process it in a different way to get great results.
How do I turn on Infrared Clean in VueScan?
In the Filter tab, set Infrared Cleaning to your desired level of processing. This will cause VueScan to make an extra pass over the image using an infrared lamp after completing the initial scan. The extra pass takes approximately 50% longer than a regular scan without dust removal enabled. However, this extra time is well worth it as it can dramatically improve the quality of your scanned images by removing scratches and dust that would otherwise be visible in the final image.
We recommend that you try scanning with and without Infrared Clean turned on and see what works best for you. You may be surprised at how well VueScan works without Infrared Clean turned on. If you have any questions about this blog post, please feel free to contact us! We’re always happy to help. Thanks for reading!
In conclusion, Digital ICE and VueScan’s Infrared Cleaning is a great tool for anyone who wants to preserve their memories in the best possible way. However, it is up to each individual user to decide whether or not to use this feature. If you are interested in saving time, then you may want to consider using an image editor such as Photoshop to repair small areas of damage. Thank you for reading! I hope this article was helpful. Please feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or suggestions.