Topic: LINKED TO THE SUBJECT BEFORE

[Frits]

Mike and other readers,

It is about a year of experience I have with Curvemeister.
Sometimes it goes well, but there are also times it goes not well in handling with CM.
One  of the courses is this:
I scanned a lot of dia-positives of earlier days.
The idea of this is to convert them to 768 x 576 pictures for making DVD slides.
But my Primfilm 1800u scanner is not of the best quality, so lots of my scanned dia's are dark and some are to dark.
But I will try to make the best of them.
So, the most scanned dia-postives are family-related , and therefore they exist mostly out  of persons.

So, making the skin tones right is the goal.
On someway that is easy, it looks so.
But , after making the skintone right, the rest of the picture is  bad.
I do all tricks, and sometimes I succeeded.
One trick is making the photo or picture right, but then is the skintone blurry.
After that I make a layer copy of the picture and make the skintone right.
After that I make a snapshot and do a history brush on the layer and paint the skintone.
After that the whole picture is right.
But that is a very precise operation  and time consuming.
I would not spend much time on each scanned dia-positive. There are to many.
So there must be a easier way to get the whole picture right.
It must not be a masterpiece, but acceptable. Certain after it is cropped to 768 x 576.
So the colors are important.
How can I  do that on a relative quick way on the difficult targets.
I have read a while ago, that Mike is thinking  about starting a upgrade class, perhaps about (pinning) skintones.
Mike, when do you start with this course.?

Frits

[curvemeister]

Hi Frits,

Yes, a skin tone class is in the works.  Other activities are competing for my attention, not the least of which is the last "fix release" of Curvemeister 2, and of course the release of Curvemeister 3.

Scanned slides (diapositives) are nortoriosly difficult, particularly if they are too dark.  I find that a two pass method, first in Lab to get rid of any large casts, followed by RGB to deal with skintones and mixed lighting issues, often works.  It is particularly important to keep the hue of skin tones in the 12 to 1 o'clock range.

Perhaps if you post a few examples some of us could take a look at them.

Mike

[Frits]

Hi Frits,

Perhaps if you post a few examples some of us could take a look at them.

Mike

Mike,
I will do that. When I met one , that I could not right, I am place it here.
It is like the thai. jpg in one of your lessons.
Sometimes I spend to much time on a photo. And perhaps when I spend more time, I succeeded.
But, It looks to me nice when I could do it quick.

Frits
p.s. I will do every time a spellcheck on english , but yesterday I discovered, it don't work.
Now again !  Strange!

[Frits]

Mike,

so I have again one difficult picture.
I know that orginally all my diapositive where good.
When not, I throw them away. 
In the old days I used a projector, which I have still yet.
But, it seems out of date, and these days we look to the television set to look DVD and photo's.
So, I am converting them.
Scanning is done in TIFF format in 16 bit. After that they are all converted to 8 bit but still be massive big.
So this one converted to 8 bit and to jpg smaller then 200k.
It goes for me how I can approach such pictures  to make the best out of them, without spending to much time.
I know , my relatives are very quick satisfied with my pictures.
( I know that lot's of people can't see what is wrong with pictures.)
Self , I am nearly never satisfied about my pictures.

So, you can tell me how I do it.
The picture is of my wife, when she was very young. About 20 years  I think.

Frits

[Frits]

Mike,

when I look to such a picture with a projector it looks good.
But the projector has a strong lamp, which I good regulate too.
The scanner lamp can't I regulate.
So perhaps are many of my scanned pictures to dark.

Frits

[Greg Groess]

Greetings Fritz,

I ran into the same problems recovering my family kodachromes....

While it is a longer process to do...
I purchased a slide duplication adapter for the lens of my digital camera.  I then used a plain white wall in my house to light the frames with. 

I Personally used a strobe on the wall to give me enough light.  When I needed more light I opened the shutter on Bulb setting and popped the flash again as necessary. 

Think of it this way.  1 pop of the flash if the exposure is normal, and double for each stop of exposure you want to add.  <Example: need 1 additional stop of light...2 pops more.  Need 2 stops...4 pops...3 stops 8 pops and so on.>

The advantage here is you can expose each slide separately.  I understand that the scanner can do more than 1 at a time but you have more work correcting the poor exposure the scanner is creating.

Another thought just occured to me.  You can usually adjust the brightness of the image in the scanning software.  Group your slides by relative exposure values and adjust the scanner exposure to help you get more into the images. 

Anything is better than fighting through adding pixel values where none exist.  I'll try to post an example of a recovery I did for my parents if I can find it...the slide visually was extremely dark.  I could not see through it with a loop and a flashlight but 16 pops of the flash later I got an image that had been lost for 45 years to show up.   

Sometimes this is the only way...I know I spent hours shooting new images but..I got 10MP resolution by using the camera and the slide adapter.  My file sizes were nothing other than what I normally handle from my camera.

Greg

[Frits]

Greetings Fritz,

The advantage here is you can expose each slide separately.  I understand that the scanner can do more than 1 at a time but you have more work correcting the poor exposure the scanner is creating.

Another thought just occured to me.  You can usually adjust the brightness of the image in the scanning software.  Group your slides by relative exposure values and adjust the scanner exposure to help you get more into the images. 

Greg

Greg,

Adjusting the  brightness with the software is a possibility.
I will try this first.
I have never adjusted the scanned image when scanning.
The idea behind is, that when pixels are there , I could regulate this afterwards.
But I will now try it. ( first editing all the 'normal' scanned imaged  with CM. )
--------

But it is a  great idea to do that also with a slide duplicator.
I hope they are not to expensive and available for my camera , the sony DCF828

also , I have a slave flash unit and a white wall.
The goal is to obtain a diffuse light on the dia-positive.
I have still lots of negatives of vacations and other stuff.

So first trying tot do it with software.


thanks!

Frits

 

[Greg Groess]

Fritz,
I understand your reluctance to adjust the scanned images...

To me it is just another variable to control.  But I can tell you that you definately need more data in the image to make this work. 

Greg

[Frits]

Fritz,
I understand your reluctance to adjust the scanned images...
Greg

Greg,

In what way am I reluctance ?
Of course, I will tray it first along the cheapest way.
When not succeeded I try the slider.
---------

But it looks to me strange that I can correct it with the software from the scanner.
the lamp under the dia-positive or negatief has every time the same strength.
I think the sensor is also even sensitive.
Or is it like in a camera that you regulate along electronic way the sensitivity?
If so, then it  is the solution.
Next week I will try some dark examples through this way.
I must search though a large amount of dia-positives.

Frits

[Greg Groess]

The scanner slows down and makes a longer scan to get more brightness into the capture. 
With the camera re-shooting you change the exposure to get the brightness.

I would start with the scanner and see if you can make an adjustment.  you might just be very suprised.
Greg

[Frits]

The scanner slows down and makes a longer scan to get more brightness into the capture. 
With the camera re-shooting you change the exposure to get the brightness.

I would start with the scanner and see if you can make an adjustment.  you might just be very suprised.
Greg

Greg,

I am surprised already now.
I have never noticed that my scanner, ( it does not matter, witch scanner)  slows down to get more brightness.
Yeh, sometimes he slows down. But the reason of that I know.
That is because I have set my HP Scanjet 5100c to scan on 600 dpi. ( optical)
He scan's each part ( a quarter inch , I  think)  3 times.  But mostly  I scan on 300 dpi, what he does directly.
So you told me that my Primefilm 1800u scanner will slows down.
Never noticed that.  He scans on 1800 dpi, optical. The end result is comparible with a 4 MEG pixel-camera.
So you understand now , I am surprised and curiously, the same time.

I will do to day a test with the primefilm 1800u scanner.

Frits

[Frits]

Greg,

I have experimented a couple of hours with my primefim1800u scanner.
I could scan on a brightnes range of 50 till 200. And 100 is the default.
So, I have scanned all my dia's in the default mode.

So experimenting some dark dia's with maximum 200.
It helps, yeh a very little bit.
I have looked the experimental dia's with a watchmakers magnifying glass and compared it carefully with the results. Also after making it better with CM.

It is not good.  There comes  very ugly things in it.
It looks that the scanner could not have to whole range from white to dark or 0 to 255.

So the scanner is good for middle-lighted pictures.
I had to go on a slider and do the dark dia's on your way.
---------
It is pity but it gives more work.
So, I go looking for a cheap slider , perhaps on  e-bay or something.

Frits

p.s. in the example the man has a gray suit.  the detail is vanished.
My wife is also on the same picture ( not seen here) and have no hair and a part of the face is vanished.

[Greg Groess]

yea that is not pretty....

Greg