chris russ

Heck, if someone could get me some details on the Canon RAW format, I'll write the stinking Photoshop plug-in. (That and some test images - before and after - to play with.) That is, unless they did something really freaky in the format.

 

-Chris Russ

http://reindeergraphics.com

You might also consider scanning the image more than once and adding the images together. At least you can eliminate noise that comes from the scanner (which is not insignificant, especially in the blue channel in dark images). You rapidly reach the point of diminishing returns, but 4 scans should add a whole bit (factor of 2) to the S/N of what comes out of the scanner.

I did something like that with my EdgeEnhancer plug-in... When a sharpening convolution kernel is applied to a neighborhood and added back to the original image, you are doing one of the following:

 

1) making it darker (especially if it a dark edge)

2) making it lighter (light edge)

3) no change (uniform area)

 

If we decide to ONLY add the dark enhancements or the light enhancements, you can do half of what he wanted to do .. sharpen the highlights.

 

(warning - marketing speak follows)

 

Dave Nagel played with it some in his review:

 

<http://www.creativemac.com/2002/09_sep/reviews/optipix102020912.htm>

 

Actually a better example comes in with a portrait where the skin tones are fairly light. If you only add in the dark edges (the places where the sharpening is negative) you enhance freckles, lines, etc. without causing highlights to bloom.

 

Another example would be a black lab. If the light edges are added to the dog, you can see detail in otherwise dark areas without causing funky shadows next to bright edges.

 

Regarding the blur in shadows, what if you put the luminance image into the quickmask, inverted the quickmask, and then blurred the image? This would weight the blur by the amount of selection (which was the luminance) and would selectively blur the dark areas more.

 

-Chris Russ

http://www.reindeergraphics.com