SRDx is a Photoshop plug-in promising to be “new standard for
Dust and Scratch Removal”. It is fact derived from the SRDx feature included in the Silverfast scanning application produced by Lasersoft AG. As a plug-in SRDx is being marketed separately through its dedicated website.
Silverfast also offers iSRD for scanners which include infrared channel output. This provides an effective way to remove the majority of dust and scratches from scans (although the patching itself is not perfect). But for some film types, in particular black & white negatives and Kodachrome, this doesn’t work. SRDx uses some form of contrast detection coupled with a proprietary algorithm to detect dark or light defects. Back in The Old Days (i.e last century) there were a number of such Dust and Scratch removal plug-ins, in particular one from Polaroid. They didn’t work very well, and neither did (or does) Photoshops’s own filter, which is a very blunt tool. However, Photoshops current manual healing tools are very good, so what can SRDx offer ?
Well, in a word, automation. SRDx is actually fast, flexible and effective. I have a large hoard of Kodachrome slides, and every few years or so I try once again to revive some of them. Many years ago I stored them very carelessly (I had no idea at the time) and they have been infected by fungus and are often very dusty. Sadly SRDx can’t do a lot about the fungus - although in some cases it has helped - but it can make short work of other imperfections.
Here’s an example. The first image is of a complete Kodachrome scan opened in the SRDx plug-in in Photoshop. It presents a simple, clear User Interface.
SRDx automatically detects imperfections, and marks them (by default) in red. It has several tools for manual adjustment, including a brush for marking undetected defects, and iteratively strengthening the effect, an eraser for zapping false detection, a mask tool for adjusting area for consideration. The automatic detection can be fine-tuned using the detection intensity and tile size sliders. Settings can also be saved as presets. So, it is simple, but quite comprehensive. The view can be switched between Original / Mark / Optimised. An example at 100% is shown below:
As mentioned, SRDx is also available within Silverfast & Silverfast HDR, but there I find it a lot less useful. Since Silverfast works with by default previews, for SRDx to work you first need to make an “HQ Preview”, which is Silverfast Marketingspeak for a full scan. You then have to wait while it applies all its processing, which for a medium format high resolution scan can take forever. In such a scenario SRDx is an exercise in frustration and essentially useless. It isn’t that much better in Silverfast HDR. On the other hand, in Photoshop, it is very fast. Finally the patching is also better in the plug-in version.
The masking took is useful but it would appear that despite the fact that you can name the mask (in Silverfast you have to), in fact you can only have one mask. Also, for some reason, in the Windows version masking is not included. This would be a major issuer are if I was a Windows user.
In conclusion then: 15 or 20 years ago this would have been a no-brainer. Lasersoft AG have taking SRDx out of its constraining environment in Silverfast and given it a new role. This enables a much faster workflow. If, like me, you have a lot of non-Infrared compatible film to scan and clean, SRDx is a considerable timesaver and recommended. At least the Mac version. At €49 it is reasonably priced, much more so than the initial €99 which was ambitious even by Lasersoft’s standards. For Windows, due to the mask issue, personally I would not recommend it. From time to time Lasersoft offer special pricing - I had an offer last year at €20 which I missed out on. At that price I’d say go for it, on both platforms.
SRDx doesn’t work miracles but it is pretty good - better than I expected in fact - and if you have a need for it, it is worth the price. Unfortunately for Lasersoft, I suspect the market is small, and getting smaller. But I wish them good luck with this initiative.
