scanning textured photo paper

I have some family photos that are on textured photo paper. When they are scanned the facets of the texture are like little mirrors and create thousands of white dots on the scan. Is there anything I can do to get a better scan? I'm using an HP 7200 all in one scanner with the HP software, importing into CS4.

When you say "white dots" are they pure white (ie complete absence of detail)? Or just lighter areas?

Turn off any sharpening on the scanner.

Here's a tutorial:

http://retouchpro.com/​tutorials/?m=show&id=1​85

Or take a new photo of the old photo with good lighting to eliminate shadows.

Damo, they are pure white speckles. You look at the photo and it's clean, you look at the scan and it looks like little white stars all over or like the photo is covered with dust, which it is not. Chrisa, I have turned off the sharpening.

If I scan a smooth glossy photo there is no problem. And the photos that have a linen look show the speckles in the weave pattern so it's pretty obvious it is the paper texture that is doing this.

Chas, I'll give that a try. The website says 2007, I wonder if it will work with CS4?

No, I can't get the FFT filter to work properly in CS4. It's the only reason I ever open CS2 these days.

A lot of photographers used to use the textured paper to stop people scanning the prints.

chrisa wrote in post #10473465
A lot of photographers used to use the textured paper to stop people scanning the prints.

Heh! Yeah, and they were pretty successful at it, as we can see! What you get is terrible if you try to enlarge it, white spots or no!

Most of these photos are from the 50s and 60s, they were professional photos but it was long before scanners.

I'd love to see a closeup of these white speckles.

Here is a crop of one of them.

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Oh boy, I don't think FFT is going to help there.

Better try photographing the photograph, as Chas suggested.

FFT really doesn't help here sadly, we get many textured prints at work to use as a source (which is very annoying, if you are planning to have some packaging made and are planning to send a textured print to become the main image, don't! - rant over).

We use one of two methods:

1. The low pass method;

Duplicate the background layer, use Filter>Noise>Dust & Scratches with a threshold of 0 and the lowest pixel level that removes the problem.

Then set that layer to Darken blend mode.

Pros:
It's quick.

Cons:
It does lose fine detail.

2. Double scanning;

The reason you get these highlights is because the light source in flatbed scanners is not at 90 degrees. Luckily though, they are rarely at 45 degrees either, so...

Scan the image then rotate it 180 degrees on the scanner bed and scan it again.
Place both scans on different layers, rotate the upside down one to be the right way up.
Carefully align the scans (Later versions of Photoshop have an auto align layers function in the Edit menu which is great)
Set the top most layer to Darken blend mode.

Pros:
Better detail retention.

Cons:
Takes twice as long.

Damo77 wrote in post #10473649
Oh boy, I don't think FFT is going to help there.

+1.... Quoted for agreement!

I like HankScorpio's method #2. It's worked for me in the past.

But looking at that sample... Is that simply surface wear from friction?

ChasP505 wrote in post #10475381
But looking at that sample... Is that simply surface wear from friction?

No It's not wear, it actually IS a texture on the photograph. you don't notice it when looking at the picture straight on, but the scanner's lamp highlights it horribly. I'm going to the the double scan method above.. it's an interesting way to tackle this issue. Thanks Hank.