Beach at sunset

This scan looks pretty similar to the slide, though a bit more

grainy. What could I have done to improve it?

Hi Stacey,

 

Firstly, nice balence between sky and sand. OK how I clean up scans is like this:

 

Scan in way bigger than you need, if possible, this will help greatly in the next step. Run the despecle filter in the GIMP/Photoshop, radius of one or two if it's really bad. This gets rid of all of the grain you didn't like.

 

Next use the unsharp filter to get the nice sharp edges back. Last time I used it the values were:

 

Radius: 1.8

Amount: <100% (photoshop) <1 GIMP

Threshold: Usually about 5

 

Try different amounts of these settings using undo/redo and pretty soon you have a sharper image than your original!

 

Now resize your image down to a nice size to post any you're on.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Phil

Thank you very much for your help, Phil. I must get photoshop. Right now all I have is the cheap photo software which came with my computer. Photoshop will definitely be on my Christmas list!

Hi Stacey,

 

I too cannot afford photoshop, £600 is a hell of a lot for an amatuer! I use the GIMP, it's a freeware version of photoshop, quite easy to use (once you get up to speed) and it is FREE!!! I know that most professionals use Photoshop, but I'm fairly sure there isn't £600 worth of extra features if you're only doing occasional dabbling.

 

You can download the windows version from here http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/ I'm sure that there are fellow GIMPers on this board (including myself) would be happy to help out where we can.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Phil

Phil, thank-you SO much! I can't wait to download it and give it a try!

Cool, let me know how you get on. Feel free to mail with any questions,

 

Phil