1. A method of processing an unknown physical fingerprint comprising: i) obtaining an unknown fingerprint image that includes images of ridges in said unknown physical fingerprint; ii) binarizing said images of ridges in said unknown fingerprint image to produce a binarized image of said ridges; iii) generating an image with fused ridges by expanding said images of ridges in said binarized image of said unknown fingerprint; iv) shrinking said image with fused ridges to create a scaled-down image; and v) masking a first portion of said unknown fingerprint image with said scaled-down image so as to create a modified image of said unknown fingerprint.