Lost technology

Quite often when I'm using our computer I think about computers in my past that were so expensive and powerful that people had to queue up to use them and special lower priority jobs were loaded so the computers wouldn't be idle for even a second.  I think how many hours of the day our computer is totally idle or showing screen savers to an empty room.  Even when I'm using the computer it is seldom more than 2% busy.  I think also about the programs such as Word or Excel that have so many features that I guessing I use about 10% on a complicated job and much less on routine work.

So it was especially gratifying this evening when I was able to productively use some technology that had been sitting idle on our desk for at least 6 years.  I'm talking about the ICE (Image Correction and Enhancement) technology in the slide scanner that we have never used before.  Slides and 35mm negatives are prone to getting dusty and scratched, at least if they're handled much.  So most of the pictures I have from scanning slides look like they could use some cleaning.  But ICE technology uses 3 dimensional scanning to eliminate dust and scratches.  I think an example is called for:

Routine Scan

Here is the original scan as I would normally scan a slide.  Pretty gruesome, isn't it?  And I'm not talking about Mr. Smiley Face.









Here's the same slide with ICE technology.

With ICE Technology

And finally, the same slide with ICE technology and some color adjusting.  It almost looks like we're real people.

With ICE and Retouching

By the way, according to the envelope the slide was in, this picture was taken 35 years ago at Chrismas 1976.