otto1

September 14, 2009

Paul,

It is destructive to save again as JPEG, even though different name.

I tested this by opening a file that had been worked on in Photoshop

and saved as JPEG level 8.

I then opened that JPEG file and did nothing but a Save As and

changed the name very slightly.

The first file was 4 682 814 bytes but the second file was 4 513 575

bytes.

I could not see any change between the two, so doing it once should

not be a great concern - except for the theoretical purists. (Perhaps it

is part of your workflow?)

However, the point remains that resaving a JPEG as another JPEG

will always result in degradation.

Do as David suggests, copy/duplicate the file without opening in Photoshop. Any

form of renaming will not alter the file contents.

September 4, 2009

John Hill , Sep 04, 2009; 01:20 a.m.

Scully} The X or EXIF Files? :-)

very good!

September 3, 2009

I strongly concur with Matt. There is a lot of salt spray as well. And I recently had to break someone's heart when I gently

tried to explain that these blurry spots were not "Thetans".

August 30, 2009

My vote is also to scale part of the sky upwards. Extend the canvas upwards only. Select as much sky as possible with

the rectangle selection, apply a lot of feathering, then Scale the section upwards. You could well be able to do it on your

first attempt.

August 29, 2009

There might be something to this. My prcanningcanning location would result in Kodachrome surf shots typically being very

magenta in the white surf. We had green carpet. Haven't had that problem since we moved. Wish I could test this

clinically.

August 13, 2009

John,

while our monitors are calibrated, those of our clients typically are not.

We create a file derived from the TIFF that will look OK on most monitors. Apologies to the perfectionists on this board

(which is pretty well every reasonable photographer), the work we get includes slides from the 1950s and snapshots from

110 cameras. Often these images are salvaged from neglect. Others are hypercritically focused bracketed Velvias.

So we create a file that has solid blacks and clear whites, without blocking or burning out.

For your old shots, start by playing with Autolevels in Photoshop, and then as you learn, progress by creating a batch job

that has a number of features perhaps including curves, save these altered files as JPEG, only enough pixels to fill a HD

TV.

Autolevels can cover a multitude of sins while keeping the shadows, but it is not failsafe.

You may get big colour shifts with some images.

Try it on the carefully created scans you have had done. It is a little like squirting ketchup on a perfect steak, but it is a

quick fix.

Also look at Shadow/Highlight, which does not alter colour as much.

While experimenting, keep looking at what happens to the histogram.

August 12, 2009

Bruce,

That is a superb response! I wish you had told me that five years ago, before I started my scanning business.

For the reasons you have outlined, we give our clients a slightly "flat" TIFF file, plus a second one that has been

generically optimised for the monitor, and makes a reasonable print as well.

You are very correct, the eye seems to crave a point of absolute black as well as another point of absolute white in order

to have a satisfying interpretation of an image. It is extremely difficult to nail this in a scan without losing something, so we

drive our scanning process mainly by the histogram. As long as it is wide without touching the ends, all info has been

captured and can then be rendered in Photoshop or other program.

This is actually one reason that I often still shoot film.

For instance, fireworks are something that I don't believe can be fully rendered with all digital as compared to film. These

shots have extremely high contrast, but the highlights still have a wide range of tones. A digital camera very quickly has

pixels saturated to 255 255 255, and once you get to that value, there ain't nothing to bring back.

August 6, 2009

Firstly, I was trying to respond to this via my iPhone, but this field could not accept text. I even walked into an AppleStore and they couldn't do it either.

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I have fooled around a bit with images during my first few days of ownership, having awesome fun putting together a pocket portfolio. Very neat for presentations on a restaurant table - much neater than a laptop!

According to Apple, the iPhone is 480 x 320 pixels, but somehow it looks more. It is 3:2, same as standard 35 mm film. If you are outside of these proportions, especially Lumix LX camera owners with 16:9, you will find that it will crop on landscape orientation. However, square is no problem.

I thought that I should transfer larger images in order to take advantage of the "zoom" function, but this is not a good idea. It does not seem to be a true zoom at all, and the full size is only 320 x 480 pixels. Zooming is like going from 100% to 200% in Photoshop.

Files that are larger than 480 x 320 are resized by the synchronising software (iTunes), and while very fast, does suggest that you may want to batch resize before putting into the synch folder you have nominated. Aliases are not transferred as pointers to transfer the original file.

One last thing. As the resulting image is quite small but very beautifully defined, some images may benefit by and extra hit of sharpening. Generally my images have moved across superbly, images look like trannies on a lightbox, but one or two seem to have softened, as if out of critical focus.

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OK, as a postscript, I was showing a tech my text entry problem on this site, and lo and behold, an hour after I had the problem, I could now enter text on this site! He suggests that not all of the site software had downloaded initially. If the Moderator is reading this, please consider mobile phones as part of your future strategy, thanks 8-)

July 24, 2009

I can't express how infuriating it is for me to hear that labs still work that way. The specifications that have been given verge on the meaningless, albeit probably delivered with arrogance.

I can speak with some authority here, as all we do at Oscans in Sydney is scanning, and thousands of them in any given week.

And before I say any more, the advice given before my post here is pretty good, especially Robert and Mendel.

The main number you need is pixels. Ask them how many you will get. Plain and simple. If they cannot tell you, the person you are speaking to does not understand what's happening.

Then decide what print resolution you need. At 11 x 14, you may find that 200-240 Dots Per Inch (dpi) is enough. So you need around 14 inches x 240 dots/inch or 3360 pixels.

So if you get a scan file that has over 4000 pixels on the long side, you should get a pretty reasonable print.

Some will say 300 dpi is what you need for a great print, OK, get at least 4200 pixels on the long side.

This applies to any film format/size.

The original specifications given dates back to all scans resulting in prints, with no further cropping or even saving as a file. Very dated way of dealing with film:digital imaging.

Do not mean to be blunt, but I am speaking plainly about this company, as we are in different parts of the world.

July 24, 2009

I can't express how infuriating it is for me to hear that labs still work that way. The specifications that have been given verge on the meaningless, albeit probably delivered with arrogance.

I can speak with some authority here, as all we do at Oscans in Sydney is scanning, and thousands of them in any given week.

And before I say any more, the advice given before my post here is pretty good, especially Robert.

The main number you need is pixels. Ask them how many you will get. Plain and simple. If they cannot tell you, teh person you are speaking to does not understand what's happening.

Then decide what print resolution you need. At 11 x 14, you may find that 200-240 Dots Per Inch (dpi) is enough. So you need around 14 inches x 240 dots/inch or 3360 pixels.

So if you get a scan file that has over 4000 pixels on the long side, you will be OK for a pretty reasonable print.

Some will say 300 dpi is what you need for a great print, OK, get at least 4200 pixels on the long side.

This applies to any film format/size.

The original specifications given dates back to all scans resulting in prints, with no further cropping or even saving as a file. Very dated way of dealing with film:digital imaging.

Do not mean to be blunt, but I am speaking plainly about this company, as we are in different parts of the world.

July 1, 2009

I've been involved in some large scanning projects involving tens of thousands of negatives. We were scanning to 50 MB TIFF files. One of the big space savings that we realised was to save the files as 8-bit grey TIFF, they were only a third of the 24-bit colour. (Yes, it is obvious, but I slapped myself on the forehead for not seeing it earlier.)

Do your documents contain information that benefits from saving the colour?

What is your expected file volume? (number of docs x file size for each one) Are you scanning to 400 ppi?

I ask this to determine if storage is really an issue. A terabyte here or there is your cheapest problem.

My estimate is that you need something like 5-10 TB.

You can also save all the files as JPEG 8 (which reduces the file size by a factor of about 15-20) in order to keep backups on local computers and drives (about 250 MB).

BTW, if you go down the path of JPEG (I don't know the specs of JPEG2000), then there is no difference between Grey or RGB for final file size.

Otto at Oscans

June 17, 2009

Too easy: scan a slide mount as reflected art on any flatbed scanner, then create a mask from that. It would work best if the film is very dark - assuming you want a white frame. And if you want a black frame (as per projector slide show), then just invert the mask to black.

I had this quandary a few years ago when I was trying to create a set of sprockets for an ad. In the end, I just scanned leader film. The sprockets then look really "right", as the slight irregularities are impossible to create manually as artwork.

I am sure that a slide mount would be the same sort of thing.

Tip: have several, as the same shape will become repetitive.

June 8, 2009

Hi Janet,

If that is all the information that they sent you, then you really do not need to feel self-conscious about digital illiteracy. The organisers know a lot less than you do. The expression "generally in excess of a megabyte" is meaningless.

You need to know two things very specifically:

1. What is the nature of the reproduction: web or print?

2. And the size?

I suspect that it is for web display only, but that is a BIG assumption.

The reason I make that assumption is that you feel it is acceptable to scan from prints. (Don't worry, in our business we scan thousands of priceless photo prints for family collections.) Most serious photographers would only ever scan from film - unless it was lost.

If it is for web display, you probably (assuming again) only need a file that is no more than 600 x 900 pixels, maybe less. I STRONGLY suggest that you simply work in pixels.

If it is for re-printing, you need the original print to be scanned at 300 pixels per inch, which will result in a file that will output to 300 dots per inch to reproduce at the same size as the original with almost no degradation. From a 4x6 inch print, this is in the order of 1200 x 1800 pixels.

In either case of scanning for reproduction from prints for web or print, you will be very adequately served if you scan in 8-bit.

In either case, you can save to JPEG with a quality of Level 8. In our tests, we find that Level 8 is essentially indistinguishable from TIFF. (If you were to subsequently modify the file, then you would work in TIFF, but that is certainly not what the organisers require. I assume.)

The resulting files will be about 100-400 KB in size. Smaller if for the web, larger if for print.

Or it could all be different, if you can find out SOME specifics.

Otto at Oscans

May 1, 2009

To the respondents so far, I would like to point you to John emphasising that he is talking about 90 degree rotations. In our bulk film scanning business we return all work to clients "correctly" rotated, so I have thought about this when is comes to doing post scanning rotation in 90 degree increments. We do all this sort of stuff it in Photoshop, as it seems to be the best way to finely manage pixels. Also, we do the rotations while in TIFF format, before we generate the JPEG files.

I might do some tests on JPEG rotations, in Windows, Mac Preview and Mac Photoshop.

Otto at Oscans

April 23, 2009

Patrick,

You prompted me to try something similar in Photoshop, thank you!

May not be doing what you have said, what I just did is:

1. Duplicate layer

2. On the new layer do a Gaussian blur, say 10 pixels for a 40MB 8-bit file

3. Set opacity to 35% - or whatever

Really sharp and softened at the same time, classic Softar.

It's ironic, because even though I have been using Photoshop since 1990, I never got around to doing this simple test, shame is me.

Perhaps mainly because before starting my own business I did not have access to quick and easy scanning. And maybe, I am becoming more photographically oriented after viewing thousands of other people's photos.

Now I will retire my Softars I, II, III.

And I can apply it to shots taken with lenses that could never fit Softars to, such as my Olympus 18 mm with 72 mm filter. Softened focus wide angle shots have a special appeal.

And same goes for those harsh looking images that come out of digital cameras, have to test that soon.

Oh, btw, apart from portraits, I used Softars for landscapes, just like Ansel Adams used to.

Lots of lovely shots to re-visit!

Otto at Oscans

April 16, 2009

Monika, we do a lot of photo scanning at Oscans, and we have had problems with many DVD players. Ironically, it has tended to be the cheaper ones that are more flexible with file formats. The more expensive ones were purchased by more affluent clients soon after they were released, and they did not all come with the facility to open other kinds of formats.

It should be easy, and the most common way if to have all the JPEG files on the "top level", though most DVD players (and those LCD photo panels) can handle one level of nested folders. In some cases, the best option is to create a DVD with an application such as iDVD on a Mac.

April 16, 2009

Yes, they can open your JPEG files on any modern computer, irrespective of brand or operating system. PCs require that the suffix is .jpg, but Photoshop should be doing that automatically.

However, unlike Monika, I would not guarantee that they can be viewed on a DVD player/TV. This has nothing to do with the computer used to create them.

Otto at Oscans

April 14, 2009

Rob Wall has the best answer so far. We do a lot of this sort of thing in our bulk photographic scanning business. His suggestion may seem a little cumbersome, but it will provide you with a consistent result. Remember, when you print, the final orientation is how you hold the paper in your hands, so they should all be the same.

HOWEVER . . . you can rotate after you have resized them. This can save time.

The easiest way to get to the correct size (number of pixels) is to resize using percentage. This is what we do, as we set the orientation prior to any Photoshop batching (like you have done). Since it seems that all your files are the same size to start with, you can write a little batch job that simply reduces to the correct size (do this step first to save batch processing time). From your information, simply set resize to 25%, then set to 8 bit, then save as JPEG level 8 to your nominated folder. (We always use the same folders for all our outputs.) Once they are reduced in size, you can view them in Browse or Bridge in Photoshop and rotate so that all are in the same orientation.

But just before you do the rotation, copy all to another folder! That way, you have retained one set with the correct rotation for uploading for the book.

Hope this makes sense, and that you get an efficient result.

Otto at Oscans

April 7, 2009

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/user?user_id=4163133">Stuart knight</a> <a href="http://www.photo.net/member-status-icons"></a>, Mar 28, 2009; 12:57 p.m.

Stuart,

where are you?

DP2 software is (was?) very expensive. There are other options, but it depends on what you want to do.

Respond here if you have not yet worked out what to do.

Otto

April 4, 2009

Have I just posted twice? My first time, I may have backstepped the wrong way. Hope I can delete one of these, sorry if I have inconvenienced anyone.

April 4, 2009

This for both B&W and color photos.

Marco, I presume you are speaking of fine art prints.

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Hi Marco, I agree with this pedantic distinction. "Photos" include positive/transparency slides, negatives, or even computer electronic files, even if no paper version exists, which would then be also a photo.

However, as we run a bulk photographic scanning business at Oscans, so we try not to offend our clients with being overbearingly pedantic, though semantics must be managed.

Owning our own high-throughput scanners means that we can keep using our lovely old film cameras (Hasselblad and Olympus OM-4 with my much loved 18mm lens) while the digital systems will catch up next year, as they have been going to do each year for the past decade. Maybe they will catch up next year. In the meantime, I will be able to shoot a lot of film before paying for top-end digital hardware. Don't make any mistake, the best of the top-end digital gear easily produces results that would be difficult to match with any film gear, but a very carefully managed film-based system can produce results that digital cannot do . . . until next year, maybe.

Personally, I shoot both digital and film on a typical shoot. Both have strengths, but some digital advantages are simply due to superior technology such as anti-shake, auto focus, auto colour balance and suchlike. These are valid and valuable features.

However, even AFTER scanning film, you can put a full-digital image alongside on a calibrated computer monitor, and the film-based image has a quality that the digital does not have. This variation can be due to lenses, but I doubt it.

For instance, film has more of a "glow" about it, such that it lends itself to portrait, figure work and any animate subject. In my experience, the photo (note use of the word) of the bench on this page has a very typical film-like quality - though digital in origin. It would have been interesting to see how the film image would have turned out. That digital photographer knows his stuff, genuine praise to him.

Film is wonderful for producing BW prints, or again, starting with BW film and scanning it.

Oh, and film is still the only way to shoot fireworks. Once a pixel hits 255,255,255 then distinguishing data is lost forever. There is nothing you can do to bring it back, without making the whole image grey.

Digital is great for "hard" subjects, like architecture and then also for "perfect" humans like models where you are not really interested in any emotion apart from "wow". As long as you have enough light, or can use digital noise in an artistic manner. Some of my late night crowd shots have a painterly quality in the darker places. This is not so good if you want clear detail, so digital latitude is still less forgiving than film in some cases. (Depends HUGELY on the camera.)

Yes, these are generalisations, but as one who has a foot VERY firmly in each camp, I bring a lot of subjective experience for my opinion.

BTW, it is generally accepted that all digital images, whether from digital cameras or scanned film, need sharpening. You may have noticed that many prints now are "gritty" which is because files (including film that is now usually scanned) is over-sharpened before printing.

Going the scanning path allows you to combine the best of both worlds, as you can then strongly control the image digitally to get an accurate print, and modern papers have terrific archival properties.

If you aiming to sell (and "fine art" is part of your requirement), then I agree with another poster here and say strongly that all chemical workflow will get the best prices. It is analogous to a print of a painting as compared to original hand painted one. Which is a little ironic, as photographic art was downplayed for many years for just this reason. It really is too easy now to click a mouse and get 1, 10, 100, 1000 prints, and the buyers all know it.

Just maybe, the buyers will also take into account that it is hard to shoot analog all the way through. In my experience, when I get a subject in front of my Hasselblad and release the shutter the first time, I say, "that just cost me $3.00," the next shot they sit up a bit straighter and are more amenable to directions.

Hope this helps rather than confuses. Good question, actually, and I think we could all go on at much greater length.

Otto at oscans dot com

April 4, 2009