Skin tone problem in grainy, soft focus photos

[JimB]

Hi,
When scanning soft focus photos with partially shadowed skin tones, I get an odd "5 oclock shadow" effect in the image - worse than Humphrey Bogarts stubble in "African Queen". Looking at the photo with a magnifier doesn't show anything like this. Turning off USM helps, but not enough. The black spots in the shadow areas seem to be there for any reasonable choice of highlight and shadow point. Have also experimented with curve shape, resolution, and multiple scans. I'm using Ai 5.5.2 with an Epson 2450 and IT8 calibration. Curiously it doesn't happen with Epson twain, though there are other problems with the Epson image, like a red tint in the skin. Epson auto adjust picks about the same highlight and shadow values, and straight-line curves, but the final histogram is somehow quite different in shape from Ai. If anyone can suggest an explanation, it would be appreciated.
JimB

[President_LSI]

Grainy Image problem with Epson Perefection 2450

Can you please forward and HDR-48 bit scan of that image to us so we can evaluate and can quickly come up with a conclusion!

regards

Karl-H. Zahorsky, khz@silverfast.com

[JimB]

The file is ~12MB. If you have an ftp site
I could upload it. Or put it on a CD and
mail it.
Thanks,
JimB