ONe for the PhotoShop gurus!

[Spinal]

Good morning gurus! A quicky here; I'm converting and have finally decided to make the jump to digital. Before I buy a camera, I need to convert all my slides to digital.

I've started scanning, and though the scanner works quite well, I've decided that tif is NOT a format I want to be keeping on my hard drive. Ideally, I'm going to back them up onto dvds using tiff, then keep jpegs or something similar. Reasoning? 400mb each tif is a little... high!

Using photoshops save-as function, I can compress them to jpeg (which I realise uses only 8-bits for the light levels, but I can't think of any other formats that will work well - advice welcome!); but doing this manually takes eons!

I've got some automated batch processes running in photoshop; but I can't do save-as in a batch... ideas?

Thanks,
Michele

p.s. its photoshop cs if it makes a difference

 

[wallingd]

400MB each per image? I'd check the dpi you're scanning at - may be excessively high e.g 1200 or something. For screen use 150 may be sufficient. What are you wanting to do with thepics? Just keep them electronically or print some?

 

[Spinal]

400MB each per image? I'd check the dpi you're scanning at - may be excessively high e.g 1200 or something. For screen use 150 may be sufficient. What are you wanting to do with thepics? Just keep them electronically or print some?

1200? Hah! Keep guessing! 7200 dpi; the maxium hardware resolution the scanner supports (it does more if you allow it to interleave pixels, but at 7200 I can already see the grain on the film if I zoom in enough, so I'm happy with the quality).

Ideally I would have 2 copies, thats why the jpeg idea - the jpegs for screen use, and the tifs for printing. At 7200 pixels, a jpeg comes out at around 25mb, which isn't bad (almost set to highest quality on photoshop).

Whats been holding me back from digital is that I was under the impression that film is sharper - accounting to the silver molecules being a whole lot smaller than a pixel. But at high resolutions, it seems like the pixels are quite a bit smaller... time to swap

Michele

 

[glojo]

I purchased a great scanner, I'm sure there are better options out there and hopefully this post will trigger a response.

There is a little flap in the lid of the scanner, I poke my 35mm negative into this and simply press a button. The negative gets devoured by the scanner, it does its thing, then ejects the strip. Each image on the strip is treated as an independant file and you can save in whatever format you want??? It does take 35mm slides but these are scanned in the conventional manner of putting the slide into a holder.

I am dead chuffed with the quality, but experts might beg to differ.

Good luck with what your doing but your file sizes are way beyond my own requirements.

John

 

[wallingd]

Sounds like you may be getting confused between dpi + picture size when you said "7200 pixels". I would have thought 7200dpi would be enough for an A2 or A1 print...

 

[Spinal]

Sounds like you may be getting confused between dpi + picture size when you said "7200 pixels". I would have thought 7200dpi would be enough for an A2 or A1 print...

Sorry, I meant 7200 dpi. When I mentioned pixels I just meant that to get any higher than 7200 dpi it would interleave hardware-scanned "dots" to create new and immagined "dots".

John, I have a great scanner (which I bought exclusively to scan my slides) - it works wonders! Problem is, its too high a resolution for everyday use! I could save them straight as jpeg from the scanner - but as jpeg is an 8-bit encoding, I would lose quite a bit on the quality aspect! (Which is the main reason I haven't gone digital yet - I found that A2 prints on a 3MP camera weren't acceptable... but now with the new K10d... its a whole different world!)

TIF uses 16-bit encoding, which is great... for storage. But not for everyday use! Is my only "solution" to rescan everything at lower resolution if I want to keep a "low-res" copy on my hard drive?

Michele

 

[timskemp]

Sounds like you may be getting confused between dpi + picture size when you said "7200 pixels". I would have thought 7200dpi would be enough for an A2 or A1 print...

When scanning a slide (36x24mm) 7200 dpi isn't very much!

Equates to 10200x 6800 pixels, or 70megapixels in digicam speak.

Film grain should be visible even on slow 25ASA stuff.

Turned into an A1 poster print that's about 300dpi.

 

[Spinal]

I found "Dr. Brown's Image Processor 2.3" from
http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html
which seems to work... its running right now on a test batch of 10 pictures - I'll comment on how it works later!

On a side note, seems like its time to upgrade my version of photoshop...
Michele

 

[SEM]

when i get signage done for expos a jpg of 10meg is good enough for a large posters at 300 dpi, this what i have to supply to the graphic designers

 

[Spinal]

A 10 meg 8-bit jpeg should equate roughly to a 250ish meg 16-bit tiff; which sounds right. Problem is, signs are designed not too be viewed from close but from far - i.e. if you get close to a sign you will see the "ink blobs".

When printing pictures for viewing pleasure, you want them to be as high res as possible - thats why you can get some nice digital cameras with 50-ish megapixel resolutions.

I've bought a copy of CS2, it costs alot less now that CS3 came out...
Michele

 

[SEM]

I hope your Machine can handle all the processing, Photoshop can be very memory hungry, the .psd files can be massive. When it comes to printing will you be getting it done by a pro company?

 

[Spinal]

I hope your Machine can handle all the processing, Photoshop can be very memory hungry, the .psd files can be massive. When it comes to printing will you be getting it done by a pro company?

The "bulk" printing (i.e. the jpegs on 6x4 proofs); no. I'm undecided between costco (3.5p a picture) and fastlab.co.uk (1p per picture + postage). The "proper" prints - I'm not sure yet! Costco seems to do it cheap, but I'm not sure about their quality. I will be calling around and doing some test prints before I decide who to do with!

I've managed to do most photo processing; a script to do:
-auto levels
-auto contrast
-auto sharpness increase
-save a jpeg copy @ quality 10
-save a jpeg copy @ quality 3, resized to a width of 100 pixels (thumbnail)
-leave tiff untouched

takes about a minute per image; so I let them run overnight on a folder. I'm running a P4 with 2 gigs of ram and windows XP - the intention is to upgrade to 4 gigs as soon as I can convince myself to spend enough to buy 4 1-gig sticks...

Michele

edit: I just thought... I might install ps on the one of the spare rack-mountables I have... 4 processors and yonks of ram sounds like a great idea! Plus, they run SD-ram, so its cheap to buy more ram... humm! The ideas!

 

[glojo]

Hi Spinal,
I enjoy gaining knowlledge on any subject that I have an interest in and here are a few questions that are spinning around in my head?

I suppose you can only save the quality of the original slide? How well does the original hold up to this type of magnification?

Does any type of jpeg compression by definition compress the file?

In my younger days I never usually carried a camera, but somewhere I have a brilliant slide picture of a missile I managed to capture just as it was leaving the launcher, this thread has tempted me to pester the wife to try and locate it I wonder what condition it will be in?? 30+ years of storage.

John

 

[Spinal]

Hello John,
I'm VERY new to digital photography too, but there are a few things I've picked up:

I suppose you can only save the quality of the original slide? How well does the original hold up to this type of magnification?

Without digital "fiddling" the best you can do is save the quality you had on the slide; which depending on the film you used can vary quite a bit. The two most important factors are quality of the actualy film and asa/iso of the film. A 100 asa film will be better "resolution" than a 800 asa film. If you get a very powerful magnifying glass, you can start seeing the actual "grain" in film. (Which isn't always a bad thing, you can get some very interesting effects with large grain showing). Grain and "dots" are very similar, except that in the digital world, "dots" (as in dots-per-inch) are aligned properly, while grains are very randomly placed.

Scanning 24x36mm slides at 7200 dpi, I can zoom in enough to see the grain before I start seeing serious pixelation - a result that I'm fairly pleased with.

Does any type of jpeg compression by definition compress the file?

Jpeg is a compression standard. What this means is that any file saved as jpeg is compressed one way or the other. Most JPEGs around are reallly JFIF files, which is a derivative of JPEG.

The problem isn't the compression per-se; its that there are 2 "common" JPEG implementations, a lossy one and a non-lossy one. The lossy one is MUCH more common, so if you zoom into a lossy-compressed jpeg, you will see the pixels quite soon. (Lossy JPEG works on the basis of a matrix of numbers, and you just "dump" the least important numbers to compress the file, then "guess" them to decompress the file - hence the large pixels. I actually did this in college, its a PAIN to do manually!)

My second gripe with JPEG is that the JPEG standard only supports 8-bits per pixel; while this is much better than the 256 supported by GIF's, the lack of those extra 8-bits is quite important. (Which makes me wonder, my graphics card supports 32-bit colours, why don't any scanners/cameras?)

In my younger days I never usually carried a camera, but somewhere I have a brilliant slide picture of a missile I managed to capture just as it was leaving the launcher, this thread has tempted me to pester the wife to try and locate it I wonder what condition it will be in?? 30+ years of storage.

Again, this would depend on 2 factors; 1-storage, and 2-the film it was captured on. I have found that Kodachrome stores amazingly well; but is a VERY contrasty film, which makes people passionately love it or passionately hate it. Provia and EBX100 (my main 2 types of film) store adequately, but I do prefer EBX100 for warmer climates (its blue saturation is something that most films can only dream of!)

If you want, I'de be more than happy to scan that slide for you; (as a 7200dpi, 16-bit tiff ). If it didn't store too well, I'm not a photoshop guru, but I've seen some other members on here that do wonders with PS. (Goes off looking for the threads with wheels attached to cars and babies...)

Michele
John

 

[glojo]

If you want, I'de be more than happy to scan that slide for you; (as a 7200dpi, 16-bit tiff ). If it didn't store too well, I'm not a photoshop guru, but I've seen some other members on here that do wonders with PS. (Goes off looking for the threads with wheels attached to cars and babies...)

Michele

Hi Michele,
Thanks for the very in formative reply. I am guessing the slide will be a Kodak derivative and probably about 400ASA, however we are talking of film taken in the late 60's early 70's (if wife finds it ) I also appreciate the scanning offer.

Kind regards
John

 

[SEM]

Hi Michele,

Can i suggest you do a search for hi res image "RIP" software (not the DVD type ripping software). Some advances have been made in some genral software and how it handles the original captured image without photoshop processing.

Here is a link to one but there are many others.. maybe worth a look. The pro software is quite expensive but for large format printing it's very fast on ordinary pc or mac. It's also good for mass printing at home!
http://www.wasatch.com/softripmain.html
http://www.colorbytesoftware.com/

SEM

 

[Spinal]

Thanks, I'll have to find a demo of those "somewhere"... I must admit that I'm having an "interesting" time adding borders to my pictures, its driving me closer to insanity! It can be so simple; yet the whole pixel:cm ratio is a pain! CS2/3 here I come - please have a cm size specified!

On that note - those two softwares seem to be specific for colour/levels correction; I'll have to really look into them - I'm quite annoyed with some of the photoshop auto-levels (a beautiful purple, orange and red sunset on a bay has become a quite plain blue sky...)

Michele

 

[SEM]

You have just dipped your toe into the void of CS2... found the plugins section yet!?

 

[Spinal]

Just thought I'de mention - I mailed the CostCo people asking them what printers they used and if they would supply profiles for their printer (a thing which most online "cheap" retailers don't seem to do); and less than a day later I got a link to :
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/icc/Profiles/UK_profiles.htm#UK
Where the ICC profiles for all their printers in the UK can be found!
Impressive!

I'm definetly going to give them a try!
Michele

 

[Spinal]

LMAO! I went to CostCo today to pick my pictures up... apparently my images were "too big", and they couldn't print them!

So, now I need to lower the image size, I need advice... is it better to save as Jpeg and lower te quality from 10 to (say) 3 or to reduce the resolution and resave? Which loses the least data/quality?

Michele