Descreen halftones in Photoshop?

[Howard Allen]

Folks--

A contributor to my newsletter is submitting a manuscript that contains a bunch of scanned images from 1940s-era newspapers and magazines. Of course, the scans are all suffering from rather bad moire patterns. I've tried to get him to see if his scanning software has a descreen function (he's using something from HP--"PrecisionScan Pro"), but either it hasn't, or he has no clue how to find or use it. He isn't computer-savvy and lives out of town, otherwise I'd go get the dratted newspaper clippings and scan them myself.

I was wondering if there was a Photoshop plugin available (preferably cheap or free) that would descreen halftone images--or even if such a thing is possible. I figure if scanning software--such as VueScan--can do it, there might be some way of getting it done in Photoshop, after the scan has been done. I've gotten him to rescan at higher resolution, which resolves all the halftone dots, so it seems to me everything is there for descreening software to work with.

Anybody know of something that will work? I suppose I could print off the hi-res scans and run them through my scanner with the descreen function, but this would be further degrading already crummy images.

Thanks in advance!