Cleaning prints from l920

[olivia]

I have started the process of scanning old photographs, primarily from the 1920-1930 era, some a little earlier. These are from my mother's old black-papered albums.....black and white and sepia tone.

She had used scotch tape to put them in the albums, plus many of them are very dirty.....general grime and also they have the black paper on them from the opposite page. She lived in Miami and I'm not sure these albums were always in the airconditioning, so some of the dirt may actually be mildew.

Can anyone suggest a cleaner that I can safely use on these photos before I scan them?

[CyberPet]

I wouldn't dare to use anything to clean them up before scanning. You *might* destroy them instead. So fix them up in Photoshop later and make new prints if you need.

[Baadil]

I agree with Petra. The first thing I would do is to scan them as they are at the highest resolution/size my scanner can optically support. I would also recommend, if the paper is textured, then scan each image twice. Scan once, then rotate 180 degress and scan again. This will help you in getting the paper texture out in photoshop.

[PhotosGuy]

I've had good results with Isoproply alcohol, NOT rubbing alcohol which contains oils. Artist supply stores sell Bestine which also works, but is pretty expensive.
One thing you need to watch out for is cracked emulsion. If you clean them, the surface will clean up but the cracks will be darker!

I had some 16"X20" prints to copy & just shot them with my cam in RAW & it worked very well.
For sepia prints, I did a custom WB on the print & the sepia was gone!

[olivia]

Thanks all!

I might try cleaning one that I don't care about with the Bestine. Then I'll know if I just need to scan and work in PS.