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World Leaders
in Anti-Static Film Cleaners,
and Anti-Static Brushes & Cloths

If your new lab has digital ICE™*
Do you still need a film cleaner?

By Michael J. Beane
Technical Director, Kinetronics Corporation

New Quality Control Tool for Photofinishers

One of the newest tools available in the photographic war on dust is digital ICE™* which has good potential for becoming a valuable asset in the ongoing effort to minimize remakes due to dust spots.

As with other tools and techniques, digital ICE has strengths and weaknesses that need to be considered when integrating it into a comprehensive program of print dust reduction.

The digital ICE technique requires both hardware and software on the film scanner. The technique uses sensors that monitor the base side surface of the film. These sensors look for and locate any material above the surface of the film. Once detected, the software component of digital ICE is activated.

If material (dust) is detected on the film, the software directs the scanner to remove dust like images from the area in question, and replace the dust image with pixels that blend with the adjacent pixels. This technique can slow down the scanner and tends to reduce production output depending on the scanner software and the amount of dust encountered.

It should also be pointed out that the digital ICE algorithm is a “smoothing” algorithm that does not replace information that is blocked by the dust, but rather eliminates the contrast of the dust so as not to visually draw attention to it. This technique is 100% effective on uniform backgrounds, (where dust is most readily noticeable), but can be counterproductive in areas of intricate fine detail.

There are a number of blemishes that digital ICE cannot detect, and therefore cannot help. Among these is dust on the emulsion side of the film, as only the base side of the film is scanned for height anomalies or “bumps”. Scratches, fingerprints, or spots are not detected as they usually lack the height required to trigger the correction process.

The addition of digital ICE to an existing quality processing operation will minimize end of line contamination of film while being scanned. This makes operating scanners and printers in dust and lint prone environments more feasible and should help reduce the number of spots on prints, decreasing makeovers and reducing customer complaints.

The addition of digital ICE, however, does not replace the need for a StaticVac®* film cleaner to remove dust from both sides of the film prior to introducing the film to the scanner. It does add a new tool for digital labs to help improve quality.

In today’s competitive market it is essential to produce consistently high quality output, which should guarantee continuing customer satisfaction.

* digital ICE™ is a trademark of Applied Science Fiction
*StaticVac® is a registered trademark of Kinetronics Corporation

Mike Beane is the Technical Director of Kinetronics Corporation and can be reached by email at tech@kinetronics.com.