Why do some black-and-white film scans show harsh edge artifacts with Digital ICE enabled?
Asked 5/12/2016
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I’m scanning black-and-white negatives and a few frames per roll show an ugly edge-enhancement/sharpened look, while most scans look fine. One example is Ilford HP5 pushed two stops to ISO 1600, scanned on an Epson V550 at 4800 dpi, 16-bit grayscale, with Unsharp Mask set to medium and Digital ICE enabled. Disabling or changing the sharpness setting does not remove the effect. What is the likely cause, and is it related to grain or scanner settings?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
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The most likely cause is Digital ICE being enabled on black-and-white film. ICE works with an infrared channel to detect dust/scratches, but traditional silver-based B&W negatives can interfere with that process and produce ugly artifacts or false edge effects.
Since changing sharpening didn’t fix it, the sharpening is probably not the main issue. Grain and high-resolution scanning can make artifacts more obvious, but the key problem here is ICE on B&W film.
Try scanning the frame again with Digital ICE turned off. Also re-run the preview after changing the ICE setting, since the scanner software may not update correctly unless it previews again.
In short: for B&W negatives, disable Digital ICE first, then evaluate sharpening separately.
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