I scanned this old photo for my mother. Unfortunately, the photo had this finish on it that created a pattern all over the scanned image. What's the best way to clear up this problem with the least degradation in image quality? I thought of the healing brush, but there aren't any even areas on the picture to sample from. BTW, I'm new to Photoshop, but I've been using Corel Photopaint for years. My mother really wants this done and she driving me nuts! Any help would really be appreciated. Linda B

If you still have the pic you should scan it again at a different resolution/scale - that usually works for me when this happens.

oh sorry- wasn't paying attention. The finish is was caused the problem.....disregard my above post. Well, this is a tough one, I think, due to the depth of the pattern and the fact that it covers the whole pic...have you tried duplicating the layer, adding smart blur followed by gaussian blur, then reducing the opacity to say 50%???

Does your scanner have a "descreen" or "unsharp" feature in it? Look aroung the "advanced" area for it. This helps eliminate some artifacts that appear in a scan. It may not be able to correct it all but it may give you just enough clean area to use the healing brush. :) retrocity

If yoy dont find any of the advanced features that retrocity is suggesting try to scan the photo at different angels. This can sometimes help to get rid of those moarpatterns. Mten

If this is indeed a finish on top of the photo rather than a scan-line moire pattern, you may be best off having the photograph re-photographed with a polarizing filter. It looks like there's a sort of pebble-grain pattern reflecting the scanners light source... photographing it with a properly-oriented polarizer should eliminate the reflections.

Linda, I think I can help. I've restored many old, faded, torn photos for people who had no money to pay the pros. First I need to ask you a few questions ok? 1) Type of Scanner and the settings you used when you scanned? (A screenshot would be helpful, but not neccesary) 2) Is this an actual black and white photograph or a print in a book, magazine, or an art (photo)print? If it is a photo, can you tell me the type of paper its on? (e.g. Kodak, Polaroid) I'll wait for an answer because I think you just didn't choose the right settings, but I maybe wrong. :) Anyways, I look forward to hearing from you.

Hello Linda, Sent me de original scan as a zipped TIFF-file if it's not bigger then 15 MB or post it somewhere so i can download it. If you don't need it like tomorrow then I might be able to come up with something. I've done some restoring too so I'll be glad to help. Eddy PS use this adress: ed-en-ien@planet.nl

Hi, some weeks ago I received an ad in my mail box aboutthis software, S-Spline. It says it is for enlarging digital images. I didn't try it yet, but maybe it could be useful. There is a demo and I don't know if you can export or save, but you could eventually print the screen and retouch the image in Photoshop... hope this can help