removing textures and paper grain when scanning

[ian]

In the past I've had to scan watercolour paintings and creased originals and a way I've found of improving the results and removing physical textures is to scan the original two ways. Scan the original once (crop slightly larger than you need) then turn the original 180 degrees on the glass and rescan. Don't adjust anything between scans. Open one scan in Photoshop or other program that supports layers, and rotate image 180 degrees (both images now have same orientation). Open, copy and paste one scan into the other scan so both are on seperate layers. Select top layer and change it's transparancy to 50% You should see the grain disappear( shadows in one scan cancel out highlights in other but leave over all picture unchanged).Now comes the tricky bit, using the transform tools or equivelents adjust top scan until it is EXACTLY lined up with the bottom. The accuracy of this depends on the quality of your scanner and your patience. When satisfied with the alignment flatten the layers and do any further processing.
This is by no means a perfect solution, but is the best I've found.

[Helpful Corn]

Thanks for the handy tip, Ian. I'll give this one a try!

Take care...

[LSI_Leschke]

The original pepper grain issue, seen when scanning Fuji slide film on a film scanner can also be reduced by scanning with digital ICE activated (if your scanner supports it).