Cleaning Remove halftone or descreen hi-res color scan?

[truanifan678]

I'm trying to clean up some scans I have so they're nice smooth colors, but still have details in the lines.

I scanned them at 600 dpi and plan on scaling them down to 300 or 150 dpi.

I've tried Sattva's Descreening plugin (demo version) in PS CS5, but the image still has a lot of noise.

I've tried combining the Smart Blur and Surface Blur with the Descreen plugin, but still have inconsistent colors, noise, and loss of details. I've tried GIMP's Descreen filter and still can't get the right settings.

I've seen scans from other scanners online as well as minitokyo where the images look amazing.

May I ask how people achieve that? How do you scan and clean your color images? I've been struggling with this for months.

I seek the advice of those with more experience than me. Help? I'm approaching my wit's end with this...

 

[Gradonil_Ral]

Topaz Denoise and Topaz Clean.

And although you can only get Topaz Denoise 5 from the official website, you should look around for version 3 as well.
There have been huge changes between versions 3 and 4. They speeded up the denoising a lot, but you can sometimes still get better results with the old version.

 

[truanifan678]

Hmm. Having trouble finding Topaz Denoise 3 for Mac, but I've been playing with Demoise 5 and Clean. I'm getting closer, but still not sure. Are there suggested settings? I seem to be losing details. Is a certain amount of detail loss normal?

Sorry for asking so many question, but I really have little idea what I'm doing. I really appreciate the advice.

 

[Gradonil_Ral]

The settings will differ depending on the raw. Please upload one page for reference.