Nikon 5000ED artifacts

[spacekraft]

I purchased the SilverFast Ai Studio 6.6 to scan my 2 thousand+ slides. I viewed most of the help QuickTime movies but still can not solve an image quality problem. I've run test using the Nikon Scan4 and SilverFast at 100%, 4000dpi, 16x sampling. The SilverFast software gives better color and dynamic range and shadow detail than the Nikon Scan4 software. However the SilverFast results have small gray pixel artifacts in the image when zoomed to 100% and the detail seems not as good as the Nikon software. Below are images of what I'm seeing. Any help or recommendations on how to get rid of the artifacts and improve detail is very welcomed. Thanks Tom.

Nikon Scan4


SilverFast

[LSI_Morales]

Dear spacekraft

What you name "gray pixel artifacts" aren't other thing that the film grain and deffects which are in your slides. You probably had ICE turned on when scanning with the Nikon software. In this case you should also use ICE or (iSRD on Mac) with your scans so this little imperfections are corrected.