Track Marks - As "Tracks of My Tears"

If you own a Kodak s1220 or near relative you'll know what I mean - those horrid single pixel tracks that ruin scans? Yes, the remains of debris attached to photos which latch onto the scanner glass. Typically from non-drying adhesive such as Blutack or Pritt Stick here in the UK. Not cleaned from the back of one photo, rubs off onto the front of the next and from there to my beautiful scanner. As a photo scanning service owner I now twitch at the thought.

But we are over it. Frequent thorough cleaning before and during each run, plus eyes and fingers fine tuned to spot tell-tale adhesive scraps. It's a thing of the past. OK, that's the back story.

Last week I was in a rush. We were within a few hundred scans of August (traditionally a very quiet month) being our busiest month ever. I know its petty and I'm the only one it affects but breaking that record, in August of all months, really got me going. When a big box of photos arrived I jumped on it (not literally). A big step to beating the record. Off I went. Couple of hours later, check the results.

You guessed, about 20 scans in, three images with those telltale streaks, and another couple at the back. Scrap it, start again, clean offending prints, eat dinner, resume after (it's twilight now), finally finish up early evening. Next morning, check, same problem. Sift through the box which held just over 1,100 photos to find the miscreants. Clean them with one of our micro fibre (that's micro fiber to many of our readers) dusters. Clean scanner, clean hands, clean up language. Re-scan 15 photos as a single batch to make sure I was getting them right.

This time, despite my thoroughness, five images had the damned track marks. But the rest were clear. Why? It was a simple explanation and without the scarring experience those years ago with the glue I would have found it quicker. All the duff scans were monochromes, same size and similar subject material so safe to deduce from the same original photo shoot. And the photos were themselves scratched. Yes, each print had three distinct fine scratches running along the face. Not deep enough to affect the surface where the chemical printing action took place and on most only visible if you knew what you were looking for. My guess was that as they went through the scanner the gouges were refracting the massively bright light from the scanner causing imperfections.

Correction - check with the good scans which orientation they needed to go though the scanner for the surface flaws not to be picked up. Half an hour later the batch had been cleaned of the original bad scans and the proper images inserted. We're a big step toward breaking the record. Thanks (again) Kodak.