Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Alexander, I too am still getting a feel for how to judge which images are most likely to scan well, and in particular, think I'll be avoiding images where important details fall beyond, say, Zones III and VII. On my initial batch of images, I do have some burnout of highlights and loss of shadow detail, but rather than try to compensate for detail that doesn't exist on the scan, I just left 'em alone. Rather than buy an expensive scanner, I had my images transferred to PhotoCD. I do not know how much it would cost to match the fidelity in the home, but I presume it would not come cheap. I seem to recall hearing of $6K, desktop-sized drum scanners, and these might be very desireable when they hit the used market. Is your computer monitor in good shape, and is it calibrated? Well-used monitors lose brilliance. MacOS 8.5.1 has a revised Monitors & Sound control panel which is very helpful. With Windows98, such software seems to be more the domain of the video card or monitor maker-I expect to be fussing with the Matrox Millenium G200 AGP video adaptor in the near future. I don't know about Photoshop 5, but 4's brightness and contrast sliders are crude tools--try the "Adjust" feature, which allows you to manipulate shadows, highlights and midtones separately. If you can, start with a much larger file than necessary, and work in 24- or 32-bits, only dispensing of the excess at the very end. I use the ProJPEG plug-in by Boxtop Software (www.boxtopsoft.com, I think). Good people-buy their products! ProJPEG is very helpful in that it allows you to directly see the effects that varying levels of compression will have on your image. Of all of the images on my site, the one of the Japanese skyline was by far the most affected by compression, so I used very little in the end. The expanse of sky really degraded quickly otherwise! I'd guesstimate that I spent 10 minutes tweaking each image. Jeff Segawa See my photography online at http://www.netone.com/~segawa - -----Original Message----- From: Alexander <mediadyne@hol.gr> >can someone tell me what is the purpose of using the best lenses, waking up at odd hours, standing in the rain...etc... to get that super picture, when at the end, if it is to be published digitaly (i.e. web) the results are mediocre at best?