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At risk of moving the discussion still further from Becky's original, very practical question about the use of ICE, I would like to offer a note from a research photo-historian: The exchange raises some interesting questions with regard to the conservation and digital presentation of photographic objects as material and historical artefacts, rather than as mere 'historical images'. It seems to me that the starting point should be that digitisation of any kind amounts to a (mis-)representation of a material photographic object which was produced under particular conditions of process and technology. To remove 'blemishes', whether they originate in the object's creation, or in subsequent material 'deterioration', in order to 'restore' what is assumed to be "the photographer's original vision", is to remove material-historical evidence. I know most of those reading this discussion don't need to be told any of this and, of course, whilst the original object remains intact, it might be argued that there is no outright loss. However, as digital resources increasingly become the first port of call for material- and art-historical research, there is a real danger that digital accessibility will mislead researchers about the nature of the evidence available from the original objects themselves. I am not presenting a 'purist' argument here, but a pragmatic one with real consequences for research. Obviously, if the objective is to produce a useable (as often as not commercial) image, almost any manipulation might be considered acceptable but these potential consequences should be openly addressed in documenting the digitisation process - and in presenting the digital outputs to the world. Such information is almost always absent from the published metadata accompanying digital images, and the resulting digital archive, with its meticulously produced images, may be mis-taken for an accurate representation of the material one - or even, god-forbid, mis-taken as an adequate surrogate for the original, especially when museums/collections are hard-pressed for space and under pressure to generate revenue! Damian. ************************************************************************************** Damian Hughes [log in to unmask]