vadim_makarov

In my experience, JPEGs in EOS cameras are low compression and preserve most of the image information. You can do radical tonal and color corrections on them using curves in Photoshop, and still the result will look very good. What you will not get out of JPEG are a little bit of clipped shadows and highlights that can be extracted from RAW. The latter ability is very rarely needed: I use it in less than 0.5% of shots, mostly to attempt salvaging shots that were accidentally badly under- or overexposed. And it won't do wonders. For all minimally decent shots, JPEG has all you need.

<p>Scott: okay, to digress. I open it flat, rest the front edge on my thighs so the screen ends up at the eye level. Mouse on a thigh. On a plane I usually have to do stuff that involves little typing, like preparing presentations and sorting/editing photos (typing is also possible in this position, just slower). I cannot sleep even on long flights, I don't read paper books, and I usually don't want to watch any movie from the entertainment set (and not in that quality, anyway). My present 15.6" laptop is no problem, thus a new one that is a whopping 3 cm wider should not be a problem either. Seat neighbors have never complained, anyway :).<br /> I'm asking photonetters for advice because (as usual) no store in my town has top-of-the-line models, let alone in this screen and calibrator configuration, so mail-ordering just to try if it works is a fairly big mess.</p>

<p>I need a 17"+, 1920x1200 screen laptop which will be used, among other tasks, for photo editing. Which of the current laptop models will color-calibrate best and have a decent viewing angle without changing appearance?<br /> Price does not matter. However, I have an extra constraint: ability to use the laptop for 4-5 hours (with an external battery pack) in a cramped economy class seat on a plane. This requires that the lid must open flat (i.e., 180 degrees, which for instance rules out MacBook Pro), and that there is an external battery solution for the laptop (I plainly could not find external battery packs with sufficiently high maximum power wattage for most high-end models, e.g., ThinkPad W700).<br /> I'm looking at HP EliteBook 8740w with DreamColor display (which as I understand is just the marketing term for an IPS panel). The laptop seems to be compatible with HP's own strap-on battery which about cuts the 4 h requirement (okay, maybe I'll have to pack two of them). Also, HP sells "Advanced Profiling Solution", which is a calibrator with software for DreamColor displays.<br /> Is anybody using this laptop + calibrator combination? Does it work well for Photoshop? Am I missing another laptop brand/model that will fulfil my need?</p>

I am looking for a success story for installing a Nikon LS-30/LS-2000 or other similar old Nikon SCSI scanner,

under Vista, via a USB-SCSI adapter (e.g., Adaptec USBXchange), with NikonScan software.

<p>

I have an LS-2000 working in the above configuration <b>except</b> that it uses a modern desktop PC with a PCI

SCSI card, not a USB-SCSI adapter. Adaptec ASPI drivers have installed under Vista (after a few tries), NikonScan

works,

Photoshop imports scans via TWAIN, no problem. I want to move this scanner to a new Vista laptop, because our lab

seems to be heading to an all-laptop setting, no desktop machines maintained any longer.

<p>

If nobody replies with a success story, I'll buy Adaptec USBXchange and try to connect the scanner to the laptop.

(The laptop is Asus V1s: besides USB, it has ExpressCard slot, 1394 port.)

How do I calibrate everything under Windows? Can calibration be done at the video card level (I have NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS) so that everything becomes uniformly color corrected, not just the image editing window in Photoshop? I haven't found so far a way to feed a color profile to the video card driver.

All my images are for web and on-screen/projector viewing, and so far I've been working without color

management

(<small><a

href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/lights-trondheim/pg3.html">sample results</a></small>). New wide-gamut monitors

are new to me. I've read good reviews of NEC 2690, but most people use it with hardware calibration. I wonder if

using this monitor without color management for preparing web images would be a good idea?<br><br>

I've got a Dell 2408 only to discover that it displays colors in a very funny way... there is no such thing as

unsaturated color on Dell 2408. Colors that were saturated on an ordinary monitor glow so bright I have to

squint. I can't adjust images on it, because any raw image looks already saturated

enough, so I don't know how I should adjust it (even though I know that the image can be improved a lot for

viewing on

an ordinary monitor). Is this just a problem with this specific Dell model, or all wide-gamut monitors make

editing images without calibration difficult? A pesky problem is that under Windows, some of the applications

where images are used (browsers, PowerPoint, text processors) are not color managed. I'm thinking of replacing

this Dell with some other wide-gamut monitor that maybe displays colors more accurately without calibration... do

such monitors exist?

John: it probably was not oil but <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000PXq">fog that is a product of glass contacting air, which inevitably appears with time</a>. Funny you decided to clean it: I don't think this fog affects anything. I just leave it alone. In fact, when I scrub off dirt specks, the fog is also removed and redistributed in parts of the glass where I scrub. It has no visible effect on projected image.

I don't know of any other reason you'd have halos except for <a href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/dirty-scanner/">dusty scanner optics</a>.

Clarification: I'm not talking about putting film into the cleaner. I'm talking about cleaning halves of slide mounts <em>before</em> I put the film in them. The aluminum foil in Gepe mounts is 0.1 mm thick. The rest is glass (plain glass, no coating) and plastic (probably the same plastic Gepe uses for all other mounts).

Has anybody tried to clean glass slide mounts in an ultrasonic cleaner to get

rid of visible specks of dirt stuck to the glass?

 

I'm using Gepe PRO VR mounts (they consist of a plastic frame, aluminum foil and

glass; the glass surface is rough on the film side to prevent Newton fringes).

My normal procedure for cleaning is to blow compressed air, look at the glass

through a 4x loupe against a lit background, and scrub the remaining visible

pieces of dirt with a scalpel. The procedure works but it is too slow. The

mounts come from Gepe fairly clean, but nevertheless the glass in each half of

the mount usually contains some visible dirt pieces that I need to scrub off.

Those dirt pieces at the edges of the frame near the foil can be especially

troublesome.

 

I am thinking of trying an ultrasonic cleaner that we have in our physics lab

(it's probably not the cheapest one). I would keep the mounts wet after

cleaning, and then dry each of them with compressed air in order to prevent

drying marks. The problem is I'm not familiar with ultrasonic cleaners. I'm

mainly concerned that the procedure may damage the slide mount itself, perhaps

in a way I cannot immediately see. For example, there is a story on photo.net

about plastic blades in an old shutter chemically altering and becoming sticky a

week after ultrasonic cleaning... I don't want that to happen to the slide mounts.

Ive installed Nikon Scan 3.1.2 and ASPI 4.71 from Adaptec (the latter after some attempts, tried to run different execs). Now I use my LS-2000 under Vista and everything is OK.

The only possible required maintenance is <a href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/dirty-scanner/">cleaning internal optics</a>. You wont need it if you buy a new scanner <strong>and</strong> keep it sealed in a plastic bag when not in use, but a scanner bought used may require cleaning.

<p>

Ive just installed NikonScan 3.1 (software for older Nikon scanners) and Adaptec ASPI 4.71 under Vista with no problem, despite claims from both vendors they wont work. It works for scanning, for me at least.

<p>

Steve: are you sure the stepper motor and stale oil are separate problems? Maybe re-oiling will fix it? You can open your scanner and re-oil it yourself, just take care not to soil the optics.

I've just installed NikonScan 3.1 and ASPI 4.71 from Adaptec under Vista, despite claims by both vendors they wouldn't work. They do work for scanning for me.

I dont think need a driver. Install NikonScan, then install ASPI (despite claims to the contrary, one of the 4.71 versions by Adaptec <em>will</em> install and work under Vista, at least for scanning purposes). It works for me.

Well, after all maybe <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00HnP8&tag=">they are right</a>.

It's a deception, actually. Ask a person who is not familiar with photo.net what the number of views represents, and you most likely get the answer "it's the number of times people have looked at this photo". This does <em>not</em> imply the number of times the thumbnail has been displayed together with other thumbnails on the gallery pages, in a folder, portfolio, etc. The intuitive definition for the number of views is that of the number of views of the larger image, i.e. deliberate clicks on the thumbnail.

<p>

A definition of a displayed parameter should be intuitive. If it's not, it should be explained right after the number. It would be okay to list two numbers, one for larger images and another for all views including thumbnail views, e.g.: 31/863 <small>(medium and larger sizes/all including thumbnail).</small>

<p>

I'm surprised to see nobody has fixed this in all the years since photo.net started displaying the number of views.

The <em>dpi</em> field in image files is <strong>ignored</strong> by all browsers. The image dimensions in pixels is all that matters.

<p>

(I have a hodgepogde of various dpi values in image files on my websites. These values have never, ever affected how the images are displayed by various browsers on different platforms, etc.)

If the page with the form has one charset and you are typing characters from another charset into the form, usually your browser will replace these characters with &-entities when submitting the form. However, this behavior and the exact &-entities used for substitution vary between browsers. A little testing will show what works and what does not.

You should have a small text on every your image with your name and/or site URL. It is not required by law, but it certainly helps to remind people who has taken the photo.

 

As for this site, email a polite complaint to the site owner (find his contact info on the site or take it from the DNS record for the domain name) asking to remove the images. If you receive no answer in two days, email a formal complaint to the hosting company that hosts the site cc: site owner. The latter email usually works. In the complaints, state clearly that you are the photographer, you own the copyright to the images, they have been posted without your permission, so please could they remove them from the site they own/host.

The links to interviews on the <a href="http://www.photo.net/learn/">Learn</a>

page are broken. They should start from the site root <nobr>(<a

href="<strong>/</strong>interviews...),</nobr> not from the current directory as

they are now. Could someone please fix this?

Select using Magic Wand, then clear up at the borders manually (Lasso tool, add/subtract to the selection with Alt+/Shift+), and don't forget to check for small islands, too, at 100% or larger magnification. Save the selection. Deselect. Go to the saved layer and do Posterize, which will make the selection sharp (no intermediate values left by Magic Wand). Load selection, Contract (experiment by how many pixels), Feather (experiment by how many pixels). Make the desired layer adjustments and see the result. Return to Load Selection and try different Contract and Feather values if necessary. That's how I'd do it.

 

Not all pictures and not all adjustments on the sky allow nice border, of course.

I'm trying to rip a fragment of a movie from DVD. What I want to do

and couldn't figure how is to rip it without transcoding, i.e. cut

out a portion of the original MPEG-2 from the DVD without re-encoding

the video and audio streams. All the ripping software I've tried so

far offers to encode into many formats, but it's always transcoding.

I couldn't find how to copy a fragment in the original MPEG-2 format

without transcoding it.

 

Is there any software, or any trick I am missing that would

accomplish this? Size of the resulting file is not an issue, but the

quality is.

 

Being able to rip only a selected fragment of the video is also a

must. At least it should be able to copy a selected chapter, if not

an exact selected fragment.

 

P.S. I'm a Windows guy.

Browsers disregard the color profile (even if you embed it into JPEGs). Photoshop may or may not use color profile when displaying. It depends on how you configure it. If you want to see images in Photoshop exactly how they will look in the browser, go to the Photoshop settings and turn off all the display compensation and profiles. Config details differs between versions. Turning off display compensation used to be a non-obvious thing to do in Photoshop version 6, but in other versions it should be easy.

 

Also, as it has correctly been pointed out, JPEG can mute saturation of fluorescent-bright colors at lower compression levels. Photo.net may recompress JPEG images to a medium compression level and this effect, while mild, can be sometimes noticed.

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For those of you looking for FoundView, I've set up an <a href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/foundview/">archive copy of the FoundView site</a>. The original site and domain name are gone. Hopefully this is OK with the founders (the site is archived in the Internet Archive, anyway).

<p>

Yes, they considered post-exposure perspective correction to be a disqualifying factor for the FoundView mark (see Bob's citation above or question <nobr><a href="http://www.vad1.com/photo/foundview/aboutfv/fvreal.html#f-3">F-3</a></nobr> on the site). I'm not happy with this and would rather see restrictions on allowed perspective correction in lieu of the blank ban. I think, the restrictions can be defined and would specify

<ol>

<li>keep the proportions of objects: you need to stretch the image by a certain amount in the other dimension, too, while applying perspective correction (calculate the amount and show a series of Photoshop's Transform Perspective trapecia that fit the rule);

<li>limit the direction and the amount of perspective correction: do not 'overshoot' the point when you've fully removed the converging perspective.

</ol>

But I digressed... I'm not debating the FoundView standard here, because it's not appropriate to touch the dead horse :) Let them be as they are histirically defined. If you don't like it, don't use the FoundView mark.