I'm on vacation now, but its a working vacation. I've brought along a laptop and external monitor, and a hard drive with all the currently scanned negatives. Now I'm going through them to pick out what makes it to the show and what doesn't.
Part of editing the photos is cleaning them up. I don't think my negatives were always this bad. In some cases, I can see where there wasn't enough fixer, or it was too weak, and there a line of dark along the top of all the negatives.
Some negatives seem to have growths on them. This detail shows a root like structure growing on the negative.
;)
Most often, there's only a bit of dust and a few scratches that need spotting. Here's a before and after detail. There's a few dust spots on the cat and a long scratch on the dark board at bottom left.
;)
Here's after, with the spots fixed in Photoshop.
;)
If the image is for the web at 72 dpi, then it doesn't take long to fix. Most of the small flaws are lost when the image size is reduced. However, when I plan to print the image, which I do at 2880 dpi, I need to magnify the image and clean up the smallest of spots, or they will show.