We’re in the memories business - we scan photos that mean a lot to people, and in the case of 35mm slide scanning images our clients may not have seen for years. In most cases our clients are very happy with the results.
I wouldn’t say the call was from an unhappy client but it was unusual because the client had a working slide projector alongside a new digital projector so he could see the original 35mm slide and the scan we’d done last week. In the scanned image he could see grain (in the sky areas) whereas in the true projected 35mm image he could see no grain (just an unbroken spread of blue). Why?
A long conversation followed, one I won’t try to summarise. It is an odd fact of high quality digital imagery that scanned 35mm originals often show more grain than appears from a projected image or from a print. It’s hard to get your head around but grain can be more visible in a 4000 dpi scan than in a 2000 dpi scanned photo.
In this case the solution was to run the original scan through a great piece of software I often use for my own images, it is Neat Image. Versions are available for Mac and Windows. It does a great job of smoothing out grain in large areas such as expanses of sky. I emailed the corrected slide over and in a few minutes our client was as happy as we want you all to be. I’ve tried the built-in filters in Photoshop but I think Neat Image is better, producing a less “waxy” effect in skin tones, and well worth the modest cost of the package.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Photo Montage
Earlier today I spent some time with a client for whom we scanned a couple of thousand photos. Part of the conversation related to his success with photo face recognition using Aperture on the Apple Mac, but we also touched on photobooks and an innovative gift he’d created for an elderly relative.
Inspired by an old favourite family photo he wanted to create a formal looking group shot, with around 15 “people” - I put it that way because these “people” are in fact the same person. The baby, the toddler, the teenager, the young adult, the proud parent are all the same person. It’s a clever idea, it’s based on a number of design elements. The backdrop was to be a photo of the family home extracted from a 35mm slide of the family home, dating back to the 1950s. The individual images of the person were taken from multiple different photos, the intention being to use Photoshop to cut / paste. Off he set, until he ran into problems.
For example, the images had to be scaled. In fact most of the pictures made the subject look about the same size so the kiddy shots had to be shrunk and the adult images scaled up. Then it seemed that these people were strangely floating in space, oddly disconnected with the ground they were intended to be standing on. While it was a brilliant idea execution proved to be far harder then a willing amateur was able to deliver. Oh, and the shot was getting very, very wide.
He had to admit defeat and managed to track down a skilled Photoshop image editor overseas. He took the scans, did some Photoshop magic and created a great composite family grouping of a well grounded set of images of the same person. Complete with lighting adjustment and shadows. The final image ended up being nearly three feet wide, making a stunning wall hanging photo, but also posing a major problem. By this time the birthday deadline was fast approaching and they didn’t want to risk air mail from down under. They found a printer within driving distance of my client who ran off a copy of the print on a massive Epson printer.
Result - a great gift, an excellent bit of Photoshop magic, and an example of international team work made possible by the internet.
Inspired by an old favourite family photo he wanted to create a formal looking group shot, with around 15 “people” - I put it that way because these “people” are in fact the same person. The baby, the toddler, the teenager, the young adult, the proud parent are all the same person. It’s a clever idea, it’s based on a number of design elements. The backdrop was to be a photo of the family home extracted from a 35mm slide of the family home, dating back to the 1950s. The individual images of the person were taken from multiple different photos, the intention being to use Photoshop to cut / paste. Off he set, until he ran into problems.
For example, the images had to be scaled. In fact most of the pictures made the subject look about the same size so the kiddy shots had to be shrunk and the adult images scaled up. Then it seemed that these people were strangely floating in space, oddly disconnected with the ground they were intended to be standing on. While it was a brilliant idea execution proved to be far harder then a willing amateur was able to deliver. Oh, and the shot was getting very, very wide.
He had to admit defeat and managed to track down a skilled Photoshop image editor overseas. He took the scans, did some Photoshop magic and created a great composite family grouping of a well grounded set of images of the same person. Complete with lighting adjustment and shadows. The final image ended up being nearly three feet wide, making a stunning wall hanging photo, but also posing a major problem. By this time the birthday deadline was fast approaching and they didn’t want to risk air mail from down under. They found a printer within driving distance of my client who ran off a copy of the print on a massive Epson printer.
Result - a great gift, an excellent bit of Photoshop magic, and an example of international team work made possible by the internet.
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