schpudmon

Greetings To All.
Glass Plate negatives are a single piece of glass, 4x5 inches in size and they were coated at the factory with and emulsion and let to dry, thus, Dry Plate. The scan er i have is the HP 3970 with the software that came with it, does not seem to be doing the right job good enough, talking to some computer friends of mine and the store people they have me a little confuzzed on which Photoshop i should buy.

Some of the plates have a solid Black border around them from 1/8 to 3/16th of an inch, other wise it will show up in the scan of the print, next when i scan the whole plate to bring out the image of the plate it comes out all black no matter what i change on the settings. There are some (Black Dots like from and Ink Well Pen) that have to be removed. Because of Age and time the backround and or images in the backround has to be cleaned upped like pictures on the wall or a vase, some of the faces are a little dark to and have to be cleaned up. I hope i have explained myself well enough to you and what i would like to do, would like the plates to come out like they were taken today not 100 years ago.
Thank you for all of your time in this matter.
Caintop=Mike.

ronmatt

have you considered 're-photographing' the plates? There are places that specialize in photocopying antique prints and documents that one wouldn't want messed with, such as cleaning the plates. Maybe you could do it yourself either with a digital cam or film. PS would do the rest