So I'm a hybrid guy for the most part. I own an enlarger but I haven't mastered using it. Most of my photos are color 35mm and I don't have a color head for my enlarger, so it's probably going to stay that way for a while.
I use an old Epson scanner, which I have a very old Windows laptop running at the moment, which is not fast enough to run photoshop or any other full-featured photo software on, just the Epson scanner software (and it really labors to do that). Aside from that, I have no windows or mac machines--my desktop machine is an older Lenovo I3 running Arch Linux, and my laptop is a fast, high-spec Fujitsu I5 running the same thing, with a Wacom touchscreen and passive multi-button pen.
I use GIMP quite comfortably for basic photo editing, but in more difficult cases I struggle. As I develop, dry and scan my negatives in a small apartment, it is incredibly hard to keep them dust free. The only place other than the combined kitchen/living room I can hang my negatives is the bathroom, and there is not another bathroom in the immediate area I can use, so I end up kicking up dust by going in there too.
I very gently dust the film side with a lens-cleaning cloth, but I do not touch the emulsion side for fear of scratching it (and remember that, to avoid too much dust buildup, I scan the negatives as soon as they're dry, so the emulsion may not have fully hardened). I end up with dust motes, and some hair scratches resulting from dust motes coming between the emulsion side and the gate of the scanner film carrier. I can improve this situation by dusting my house but I don't think I can do away with it entirely while I'm living in this apartment.
Does anyone have any good tricks for quickly/automatically reducing dust motes and hairlines in GIMP or any other Linux program? Preferably one that's in the Arch repo or the AUR I can do it by hand but it's up to ten minutes of work a frame, and I'm not always happy with the result.
I use an old Epson scanner, which I have a very old Windows laptop running at the moment, which is not fast enough to run photoshop or any other full-featured photo software on, just the Epson scanner software (and it really labors to do that). Aside from that, I have no windows or mac machines--my desktop machine is an older Lenovo I3 running Arch Linux, and my laptop is a fast, high-spec Fujitsu I5 running the same thing, with a Wacom touchscreen and passive multi-button pen.
I use GIMP quite comfortably for basic photo editing, but in more difficult cases I struggle. As I develop, dry and scan my negatives in a small apartment, it is incredibly hard to keep them dust free. The only place other than the combined kitchen/living room I can hang my negatives is the bathroom, and there is not another bathroom in the immediate area I can use, so I end up kicking up dust by going in there too.
I very gently dust the film side with a lens-cleaning cloth, but I do not touch the emulsion side for fear of scratching it (and remember that, to avoid too much dust buildup, I scan the negatives as soon as they're dry, so the emulsion may not have fully hardened). I end up with dust motes, and some hair scratches resulting from dust motes coming between the emulsion side and the gate of the scanner film carrier. I can improve this situation by dusting my house but I don't think I can do away with it entirely while I'm living in this apartment.
Does anyone have any good tricks for quickly/automatically reducing dust motes and hairlines in GIMP or any other Linux program? Preferably one that's in the Arch repo or the AUR I can do it by hand but it's up to ten minutes of work a frame, and I'm not always happy with the result.