When it comes to negative scanning the vast bulk of our work is scanning 35mm material, but we do get many other formats - including some that are smaller. It’s a basic rule that the smaller the original the poorer the enlargement (all other things being equal). What can be done to make the best of small source files which appear excessively grainy?
We use a great piece of software that can be used as an add-on to Photoshop and Aperture. This reduces grain and at the same time improves sharpness. It can work wonders on grainy scans, or scans with excessive noise, and it gives good results just using the default settings. It’s called Neat Image, and I believe you can download a trial version at no cost.
