How to remove thin vertical streaks in scanned photos caused by auto feeder scratches

[Hudson22338594tzlq]

I purchased an Epson FF-680W fast photo scanner.  It's the only photo scanner on the market that is purpose built to quickly scan stacks of up to 36 prints.  I tens of thousands of prints in albums and envelopes that I need to digitize, so this would be the only viable solution other than paying a fortune to a service.

Unfortunately either the feeder mechanism and/or any minute amount of dust on the print will cause white vertical streaks to show up in the darker parts of the image.  After scanning, these are visible on the actual print as very fine scratches, which are accentuated by the scanning software.  (Epson, clearly aware of this problem, added a "Reduce Lines & Streaks" option to the scan software; unfortunately, this feature introduces an incredible and unacceptable amount of chunky noise to the dark areas of the image).

Does anyone know if there is an automated way to detect and eliminate these streaks in Photoshop that I could do as a batch process?  If not, the scanner is getting returned and my photos stay unscanned...

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Have you tried the Photo Restoration Neural Filter?

I used a combination of the Photo Restoration and then the Skin Smoothing to help with the scratch on the face and got this in 2 minutes. Not prefect, but most of the way repaired. The rest should be easy with a smudge or healing tool.

[Hudson22338594tzlq]

Wow, thank you Kevin, I wasn't aware of this filter, and was hoping for something like this.  I tried it out with Scratch Reduction set to 100, and it got rid of around 90% of the scratches, and most of the dust as well.  And the Photo Enhance & Face Enhance features are welcome as well.  

With many thousands of images to process, I won't have the time to manually remove whatever the filter can't on all my images, but this at least gets me in the ballpark and reassures me that I can scan everything without it being a waste of time, knowing that I can always go back and correct something if I need to.

Interestingly, I tried it out on both my Mac & my PC to see if there would be any difference in the amount of time required to process.  My PC is a little faster (23 vs. 27 sec.), but I am getting consistently better results on the Mac - on the PC, only around 80% of the scratches are removed.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

It really depends on the device - GPU, processors, etc. Not all Neural Filters run through the cloud. If they all did they would be more consistent between devices, but also would improve with each use as the machine learning/Sensei AI receives more input.

[Hudson22338594tzlq]

Unfortunately, the Photo Restoration filter doesn't work with batch processing.  I tried this on both my Mac & PC, and found another user experiencing the same thing on the forum.  Perhaps because it's in beta?  I tried some other Neural Filters, and they can be batch processed.  

Until this is working, I won't be able to tackle this project.

[Kevin Stohlmeyer]

Honestly if you have that many images to scan, I would return that scanner and see if you can find another physical solution that doesn't cause the lines in the scan, even if its a replacement model.

FYI Canon also makes an auto-feed bulk scanner.
https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/imageformula-dr-c230-office-document-scanner?color=Black&type=New

[mglush]

Hi!

I have used the Fast Foto scanner and it does a great job, but I would highly recommend cleaning the head. And if that doesn't clear up the problem, then contact Epson to see what your options are, because obviously it shouldn't be doing that. The scanner instructions recommend cleaning the head after every 300 or so photos.

Now, in addition to Kevin's suggestion above, there is a cool little known tool you can use to copy and paste 1 column of pixels at a time:

Select the Single Column Marquee Tool to select the column next to the missing row, copy it and move the selection over one pixel and paste. It is not fast, but it is accurate.

Michelle

[Hudson22338594tzlq]

Thanks Michelle.  I was seeing these results with the brand new unit right out of the box. I went through the cleaning procedure, and found that while it initially seemed to improve the results, within a dozen or so scans it was right back to the same streaking.  I should mention that the prints I'm scanning are not particularly dusty and dirty.

I also found lots of other folks posting about the same issue in various forums, and several mentioned that they exchanged their units for a new one only to find the same problem with the new unit.

Just curious - are you saying you haven't encountered this problem at all?