Photo-Dandriff

I'm using a pretty good quality scanner from hp and i'm scanning 4 x 5 black and white's, infrareds and a couple of platinum/palladium. I'm getting some kind of white specs that aren't showing up on the prints themselves...and the scanner is 100% clean. Can anyone tell me how to eliminate this and what it's stemming from?

Scandruff? Your scanner's sensor may be flakey. ;-)

Seriously, sometimes individual pixels in the sensors die. Or, it might be "noise" introduced by environmental factors. Check where your cables are going, what they are crossing, or are positioned near to, that might be introducing noise in the line.

If I scan a photo with a pure black background and then lighten it in P$hop, it looks like it was taken during a snow storm. I always just thought it was the price you pay for taking a perfectly good analog print and turning it into a digipic.

One of the big problems, especially with flatbeds, is even though they look clean, often times minute dust particles will get inside under the scanner bed and rest on the CCT light that actually does the scanning, same thing happens with copy machines, which is one of the reasons why they have to be serviced so often...if you can carefully take the halves of the scanner apart, you might be able to use some air to clean the inside, I would not recommend it unless your real familier with computer periphials.

Dave