Capture sharpening for scanned old photos

[Bill Raich]

Any advice for the amount (and type) of Photokit Capture Sharpening to apply to old photos which are scanned with a flat bed scanner into PhotoShop for restoration? Usually I scan at 360 dpi unless I am making enlargements and then I choose dpi settings to get a bigger file. I do my major tonal corrections first, but I am not sure what are the approprate Capture choices to use. I have started a little business restoring old photos and want to produce as high quality a product as possible. Thanks in advance for guidance. Bill Raich

[Bruce Fraser]

Bill,

We made a deliberate decision not to attempt supporting scanning of prints because there are simply too many variables for us to be able to produce a good result automatically?we'd have had to get the user to fill in 20 questions, and even then we might not have done the right thing. We'd have to take into account the size of the print, the quality of the processing, the amount of grain, the resolution and noise signature of the scanner, and probably a few more things that elude me right now.

All the techniques that go into the capture sharpeners are described in my article at

http://www.creativepro.com:80/story/feature/20357.html

If you're going to be doing this a lot, the best recommendation I can make is that you roll your own. I'll be happy to give you a certain amount of help if you need it?contact me offline at bruce@pixelgenius.com.