Noise (removal) from scanned slides

I'm relatively new to Aperture and the image adjustment process in general.
I have many slides dating from the late 70's and earl 80's (yes, I'm heading up in age). They were taken with a SLR Cannon AE1 which was pretty good for its time. So many of the images are pretty nice. The goal is to capture them digitally. We had one tray scanned commercially to start our process. From my perspective the scanning process was pretty successful and I have brought them into Aperture and organized / rated them etc.
My questions are what I'll term "noise". Being very old, the slides have "dust", dirt etc. on them. This coupled with any original image processing noise and any artificialities due to the scanning process make may of them dirty /noisy. The problem is more significant/observable in lighter areas such as sky, beach etc. So the impact of what I call "noise" is not global across the image. That is my problem.
I went to the Apple store for some 1-on-1 advice and basically was told go image by image with spot/patch, retouch, and the global noise reduction tool (not a good session). Obviously, that approach would be tedious, long and painful.
Assuming I don't want to rescan,
1. Are there workflows or processes that help reduce this conversion "noise" that have worked for others. Are there "best" practices way to improve images that arrive this way.
2. One approach I have considered is an plugin editor that can help smooth the noise and do so on specific image areas.
- is this a valid approach
- are there recommended plugins for this problem.
3. Any other directions or approaches from other that have been through this process would be appreciated.
I appreciate any recommendations,
Bob

Noise has very specific meaning(s) in digital imagery. What you have are film dust and scratches, very different than noise.
The bad news is that removing dust and scratches from digital images takes practice and is very time consuming; most folks use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. The good news is that dust and scratches on slides (except Kodachrome) can usually be 98% removed during the scanning process using digital ICE technology (google digital ICE for info).
ICE is hardware dependent, but all quality modern scanners have the capability. However the scanner operator must manually choose ICE before scanning, and like I said ICE does not work with Kodachrome. Your commercial scans were badly done if the slides were dusty (most are) and ICE was not offered to you.
There are various filters (google dust and scratches filter for info) that can also be helpful, particularly for Kodachrome, but I have not personally used them because I use a Nikon 8000ED with ICE and the results on dust and scratches are nothing short of amazing. With ICE the scanner actually ignores the film surface where the dust and scratches reside. Unfortunately with Kodachrome the image is also on the surface of the film.
Good luck!
-Allen Wicks

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