Digital ICE ...

However careful you are atmospheric dust gets at your images, and of course there may be unfortunate incidents which result in damage to your original. You might even have been cursed by a camera which made minute track marks on the negative or slide inside your camera. Maybe your film had drying marks, or a few fingerprints have been picked up over the years.

Clever computer software such as Photoshop or Paint Shop began the crusade to rid our images of these fatal flaws. Then even simple packages such as Kodak's Easyshare or Apple's iPhoto added solid editing tools to enable you to carefully brush out unwanted marks.

However, it takes time. Hours and hours of time and some technical skill to master tools such as cloning.

Enter Applied Science Fiction and a piece of hardware that is built into scanners called Digital ICE. This uses an infra red scanning channel to calculate where surface defects are on the film, and removes them. This transforms the quality of the final scan, saving your hours of tedious work. As Kodak says, 'bust the dust while you scan'.

This technology was bought by Kodak and Applied Science Fiction became Kodak's Austin Development Center. Due to the way Digital ICE works it has to be built into the scanner, and it virtually doubles scanning times. However it's worth the extra investment for the time saved in later edits of your pictures.

But. Yes, there's a but. Digital ICE doesn't like the silver found in black and white negatives (and some prints). And despite its history Digital ICE is temperamental when it comes to scanning Kodachrome slides.