This is the item to discuss digital manipulation of phtographic images. Examples might include, what is your favorite photoshop filter, what projects are you working on, what refernces do you find helpful?119 responses total.
This is really interesting to me, but I know ZERO about it. I am considering spending some hard earned cash to play around with digital photos in general. I hope we get some informed people to start a healthy discussion here. Thanks.
I am interested in purchasing one of the software programs to change/modify the photo image from disc. Could this technology make the darkroom obsolete? If the poducts are half as good as the adds claim, they just might. Is anyone familiar with such software?
Popular Photography (magazine) has had a number of articles about this recently, and many examples.
I have no experience with digital manipulation, but Adobe Photoshop seems to be most frequently mentioned. Another thing to consider is the RAM level of your computer. Again, I am not experienced, but I think you need 16 M and perhaps as much as 32 M. Anyone else?
I'm considering buying a Microtek 35T slide scanner, which comes bundled with Photoshop LE (limited edition). It offers 8 bit times 3 passes scanning for color. The difference between this and a typical flatbed scanner is a higher optical resolution: more dots per inch. BTW, this requires 8 Meg to run (which I have :) ). This unit seems about the same in optical quality as a Polaroid model costing around 2X as much which features faster scanning. I wonder if anyone in this cf has any experience with these types of scanners. The 8 bit models run from $950 to $2,000, while fancy 10 or 12 bit models now being advertised go for upwards of $2,500 to $6,000. As I am mostly interested in an archive of of files I can use via a browser like Netscape, and not for a Nth degree quality presentation, I won't be considering the top end models... Maybe this item should be linked to one of the computer cfs so we can learn something from some of the users of this sort of hardware that might not be on the photo cf.
I have droped an e-mail note to the fw's of the micro cf - (Omni & Jshafer) asking them if they think it is appropriate to link, and if so to go ahead. We'll see!
I use Photoshop on my Mac...it's a great program, though for basic functions (contrast/brightness/hue/saturation adjustment) there are cheaper/free programs. It's also an incredible memory hog...I run it with just 8 megs of RAM (half of which is used for the operating system), which makes things darned slow, but even with 16 megs it's pokey. Depends on image size too...Adobe offers some rule of thumb, like you ought to have 8 megs plus two or three times as much RAM as the image size, or something like that. I'm not too familiar with darkrooms, but from what I've seen, if you have an okayish print, you can scan it and run software to do anything you'd do in a darkroom. Though the resolution on the computer is usually lower, and converting the image to hard copy, with screen & printer colors synched, is an art unto itself. On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me to see film pretty obsolete in a couple decades.
Can you burn and dodge on a computer? (Selectively over or under expose?)
one pixel at a time....
I'm not sure of the exact effect you want, but you can select a subsection of an image, and apply a transformation on it (brightness adjustment would be similar to under/over-expose). Normal retouching of part of a picture this way is quite easy. You could also easily make a section redder, sharper, or blurrier. If you're trying to make neon-like glows around parts of the image, it's a bit trickier, but you can do that too.
The big problem is reproducing in the digital realm the effect known as "the magic of film". If you have ever seen a "making of" about a movie and all the explosions look super-cheesy, it is because the special is on video tape vs. film.
Yes you can burn and dodge in photoshop (3.0). Select the "toning tool" it looks like a lollipop. Double click it to set options (and brush size/shape). It also offers a "sponge" option. I'll have to go get the manual to figure out what that does. Photoshop is demanding on your hardware, but if you feed it enough iron, and ram, it works really well.
I currently don't have enough power to run Photoshop. If I get 8 meg ram to add to my 486 dx would that do it? Do I need anything else like a Graphics accelerator card (whatever that does)? Finally, if I don't invest in a super snazzy color printer, can I go to any place in AA (Kinko's) and have the files printed from a disk?
I am only familiar with the Mac ports of Photoshop. THe original port, requires a 68020 or better MC68k processor and requires 6MB of application memory. For a 68K Mac running System 7, 8MB would be a squeeze, but you could do it. For the PowerMac version, it requires a PPC601 and 11MB application memory. A 16MB system would be required. For the 386/486 PC version, I don't have any literature. My guess is that 8MB Ram would be inadequate, although Rob Argy says he can do it. I am not familiar with Photoshop on this architecture, as I said, so I'm only guessing. 16MB ought to be enough I would think, unless you were running Windows NT. Photoshop includes its own virtual memory implementation, so if you are willing to wait while it swaps images in memory, it can do a lot more than you might think with less memory. I have gotten fed up with waiting and added more RAM to my system, though. I don't recommend challenging Photoshop's VM by running it in a small space unless you just can't afford more.
Actually, I run PS on my Mac with 8MB of RAM, though I'm not sure if I need virtual memory for that. I prefer PS 2.5.2 to PS 3.0 for most things because it's quite a bit faster. A friend of mine uses a PowerPC Mac with 8MB RAM with PS 3.0 a lot, but it is excruciatingly slow, and I know it uses virtual memory. The downtown AA Kinko's has the best publicly usable computer equipment I've seen. They have a nice new Apple color postscript printer, though it's $2/page, and an HP black & white printer, and perhaps some others. Photoshop is available at least on their Macs, and they can read PC disks if they don't have it installed on their PCs. They also have an Apple OneScanner on one Mac ($20/hr to use it), or they can scan images for you on either platform for $10/scan.
Thanks. I guess if I decide to go for it, it'l have to be 16meg (ouch).
A PowerPC Mac with 8MB is going to be very slow. I have my PPC Mac set to give Photoshop 3.0 it's 11MB suggested. It works great!
There is also something called "Ram Doubler" which is a background application to double your ram via various economies, with disk swapping as a last alternative. It is supposed to work much better than virtual ram in terms of not slowing down a system. I'm not familiar with how well it would work with a real hog like Photoshop. I also understand that it works best when you are starting with 8 or more meg, but will also work with a minimum of 4 meg. I have it installed on my 8 meg Mac, giving me an apparent 16 meg of ram. I haven't put it to a serious test yet, though. IT is available for both Mac and Windows for about $55.
Another alternative is to get something other than Photoshop! HSC (publishers of Kai's Power Tools) recently released a competitor, with one of its main claims to fame being *speed*...it allegedly edits half gig images faster than PS can edit half meg images. Quark is also coming out with a competitive product, which is supposed to be more speed-oriented than PS. I'm not totally clear on the details, but both sound like they're more into storing images and modifications to the images, giving a speed boost over PS's approach of changing each affected pixel of an image as its modified, even if it's off-screen or too small to see on screen. Apple also publishes an intro-level image-editing package for around $100 that handles the basics. I'm thinking of popping $100 for a new 3d graphics package that models the human body. It looks like a fun tool to play with. Not sure if I'll need something else to render the wireframes though. Can anyone recommend a cheap-but-decent ($100 or less) general-purpose 3d package for the Mac? Seems like the good ones are $500 or more.
I strongly recommend Ray Dream Designer. It is not under $100, but it is within reach at about $250. I like how it does solid and surface textures, and text, especially (bevelled 3-d letters, for example). Relatively fast rendering, too. No animation (I can live without it). Modeling is pretty good too, but it doesn't allow you to edit a surface point-by-point once you have constructed it, like the really expensive packages can. I think it's a great bargain, anyway. Or get POV (shareware) for PC. It's much more limited with textures and text, but less money. Not for my taste, though.
I bought a Microtek ScanMaker II, which works very nicely. I'm not really interested in creating 1G images, but that's what it would take to make a decent size, high resolution color image. Luckily, images scanned at fairly low resolution look great, too. (a newspaper image is only about 80 dpi), and besides who needs millions of colors when your hardware is blind to all that resolution. For compiling a fairly good collection of images from photos and documents this seems to work well. You *can* create nice looking color images for <100K, with trial and error. I usually make a "rich" scan (2-4 meg) and then knock it down, paring away a little quality and a lot of memory. Some types of pictures look great in 16 colors, 16 grey scale or even straight B or W. One buggy problem I've been getting seems to be related to memory allocation on my Mac. I have enough memory to run the software (Color It! with a Photoshop plug-in for scanning) but I have started to get "not enough memory" errors *on other programs* after using the scanner. This has me puzzled because a check of available memory shows I am using only a fraction and should not be running into any walls. I have virtual memory turned of, but am using Ram Doubler. The problem persists whether RD is switched on or off. Eventually the problem clears up, but I have not been able to keep it from returning or decide exactly what the cause is.
Have you tried removing RAM Doubler from your system folder, as opposed to clicking the "off button?" Weird problem...I think every Mac has a couple unique oddities like that :). I heard that the human eye can only consciously discern about 4,000 different colors. I'm not sure I believe that, but if true, it seems the "millions of colors" used in high quality images is either wasted on us or maybe works at a subconscious level. If my computer could display millions of colors, I'd be curious to compare an image using that with an image converted to 4,000 colors, to see if I could detect any difference. I can definitely see the loss when I go to 256 colors.
I don't think it's related to the doubler, but I might try physically removing it. I can debug the bug by using the "get info" menu and tweaking up the preferred memory on the balking program. The strange thing is that it's a one time solution and not a fix. The program runs fine even if I turn around and lower the memory allocation... until the next "blockage" occurs. And leaving an increased memory allocation won't prevent the bug from its return.
Does the problem persist after rebooting (as we discussed f2f)? RAM fragmentation could persist after running several applications simultaneously.
Yes, and, as I share use of this computer, see: Hot Water.
Does Color It! leave an INIT (extension) active upon reboot? If so, are you have an extension (or control panel) conflict? If there is one associated with Color It!, stick it in the disabled extensions folder, and check for the problem after reboot.
Re #22: The human eye actually has two color thresholds; we are much more sensitive to differences in color when the two colors are next to each other than we are when they're separated. So it may be that 24-bit color is useful for providing smooth color gradients, even though we might not be able to individually discern all of the colors used.
I haven't studied this in any depth but.... the human eye can only respond to three colors as it has only three visual pigments. All the other colors are admixtures of responses of the three pigments. 256 - or 4000 - colors are therefore differences in levels of intensities of the admixtures, and in fact would depend on light intensity as well as the source intensities (since the pigment responses are nonlinear). In view of all this, I am not sure that one can categorically state that the eye is "more sensitive to difference...when (they) are next to each other". First, I am not sure what is meant by "more sensitive", and secondly, one has to define "next to each other" and "separated", and thirdly, I think it would depend on the placement of the pairs in the tristimulus space.
It is probably not correct to say that "the eye" is more sensitive to such combinations, since all the eye does (as you stated) is respond to stimulus as a combination of red, blue, and green. However, the perceptual centers of the brain may well be better at discerning that color A is "different" from color B when they are next to each other, versus on opposite sides of the visual field and separated by a third color. This is similar, I would think, to our perception being more sensitive to any kind of difference when we can compare the cases side-by-side.
Well, soon I will be launched into the computer age in photography. My wife is getting a super mac (#7500) with all the bells and whistles. She will also get Adobe Photoshop. I was starting to save for a PC capable of doing photo work, but now, I can divert these savings toward the other stuff, like printers, negative scanners, & possibly some sort of digital camera. Anyone have any experience/suggestions where they would start? I have done black & white darkroom photo printing for 30 years plus, and I thought I would start out with b&w digital if it is significantly lower in initial cost. I would also appreciate any advice you may have here.
I just used my new APple Quicktake 150 Digital Camera (and some help from photoshop) to produce the images on the GrexWalk photo homepage. http://www.hvcn.org/info/grexwalk/grexwalk.html I am a little disappointed that the jpeg compression it uses is so harsh. It compresses 640x480x24 images to 68k in high res mode, and 34k in standard mode. I have found standard mode just about useless. HIghres mode gives you 16 marginally usable pictures per camera load (1MB Flash EEProm). It did a fine job for the Grexwalk, because I shrank the pictures to fit the web site. If I left them at 640x480, I would have remained disappointed. I wish it had a third resolution which was 132k and could only fit 8 pictures. It might be very useful. If I wanted larger pix, i would use 35mm and photo CD. It's much higher quality. I just hate waiting 3 weeks for developing. That's what it took.
I haven't looked into it yet, but I thought I remembered ads for negative scanners which were in the $500 range. Do you know anything about these? As I recall, the scanner would do negatives or slides and they were supposedly for high resolution scans.
I have never used a negative scanner. I would expect the quality of the resulting scan toobe excellent in comparison to the low-end digital camera, but the price you quoted seems way low to me. The only transparency scanner in the mail order catalog I happen to be looking at is the Nikon LS-1000 (2700 dpi, slide feeder optional) at $2000 THere are a lot of flatbed scanners near that price range, though. Some have transparency adapters, but because they are flatbed scanners, they don't offer the resolution you really want for scanning negatives or slides. Relisys has a REL2412/T Mac single pass 24 bit scanner with 1200x300 optical resolution, It's a SCS devices which includes the transparency adapter and runs $770, but 1200x300 is unacceptable resolution for negatives or slides. That's the low end. At the high end of the Relisys line is the RELI 9624/P Mac 2400x600 optical - $1500. Much better resolution, but still not up to par for slides, and already 3/4 the price of that Nikon. Admittedly these do come with bundled software, some of which is valuable.
Well, it may be later rather than sooner when I buy the scanner, but I think I'll keep it on my shoping list. Meanwhile, I will try to locate that $500 scanner I "think" I saw. If I locate it, I may post another note about it.
Sounds way low to me too, but ya never know. Choice of output device depends a lot on what you want to do with the output. For proofs or newsletters or casual use, most postscript laser printers are good (especially some of the 600dpi ones with "resolution enhancement technology" or whatever the particular manufacturer calls it). For high quality output (things you'd frame, or want a poster of), I'd do some reading on the options available, and get the same picture printed using a number of methods through service bureaus. I wouldn't pick any particular high-end device until you've compared the output and understand the tradeoffs. My dad did a number of color prints using Iris prints (I think that was the one) a couple years ago, and already the colors are changing. Not desirable unless you're Andy Warhol!
Thanks for the insight & the precaution. It'll be a while, but I will post when I get the funds close and the research to my satisfaction.
Does anyone have any knowledge about the "replacement" of standard emulsion
photography by digital photography? Is there a future for standard
photography in any of the following fields:
(1) amateur
(2) Custom (weddings, etc)
(3) Special Corporate
I am interested if anyone knows if continued growth is predicted for the
standard wet chemistry/emulsion photography industry.
Thanks
Hrm...looks like the conference is dead? At least this post is...
Well, this item... My experience is that when viewing a test pattern 32K colors leaves significant steppings between colors. 64K colors is the same but with better smoothness in the green range. 16M colors is smooth. This would make 256 colors fine for 'office' work, but 16M would be needed for any kind of graphics work at a fairly serious level. Thousands of colors is probably enough for the graphics that most regular people use. YMMV.
About digital photography software: Photoshop isn't the only thing out there by a long shot. My personal favourite is Paint SHop Pro by Jasc software. www.jasc.com You can download it from the website, and it does many many of the things Photoshop does, and can use Adobe Photoshop plug-in filters. IF you are a beginner with this, you can download the shareware version, then by the time it runs out, you have some idea of a few of the things that can be done with digital photography. Paint Shop PRo will run TWAIN devices(scanners, cameras, etc...)
I assume your referring to PSP 5.0. I haven't tried that one yet. I'm still using 4.0, which does pretty much what I need to do. For more complex tasks, I use Painter 5, which does layering like Photoshop, plus some really nifty effects and filters.
And then of course there is the GIMP... Haven't played with it yet, but toking said he was impressed by it... (And I guess there's a Windows port...)
Re. 42: I've played with Gimp. Not bad. I'm sure it'll be even more cool after I read the docs for it. 8-)
So far I haven't found anything Photoshop can do that GIMP can't. Well, except talk to my scanner, but that's a lost cause. It's a parallel-port one.
Linux will talk to parallel-port hardware as of recent releases. I have my parallel port zip disk running, and I saw when I was setting it up that there are drivers for some parallel port scanners. I'm not sure if yours is supported, but you should check a recent 2.3 kernel.
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photography 5 <==> micro 133 <==> graphics 5
Well I goofed... the 1st roll of photos I had done on a photo-CD I had done as high-res scans (about 1MB each). I'm happy with the results of the camera, but can't send them to friends via e-mail (Yahoo, Juno, HotMail have size restrictions on attachments). Any suggestions on shrinking them digitally, or do I have to have them re-scanned to do that? (I don't want to simply compress them with pkzip, etc, as I will eventually use that to group several shots into a small enough file to send via e-mail).
Any image editing program will let you resize the image to a smaller resolution, and save it. (JPG is usually the best for distributing photos...it's lossy compression, though, so you trade off quality for size.) Adobe Photoshop will work if you have it. If you don't have anything like that, there are free tools you can use. I'd suggest LView Pro. Or Paint Shop Pro, if you want something also capable of doing retouching.
Fireworks gives you a preview box, so you can see exactly what your graphic will look like at a given compression, and adjust so you have a decent balance between quality and image size. Been a while since I've thought of a one-meg photo as "high-res"...
What do you think of as "high-res"? I very rarely run across a photo that is larger than 1 Meg. Most are between 50 and 300 K.
It'd depend on the file format. 300K is a pretty big JPEG, but small for, say, an uncompressed TIFF, which can easily be many megabytes.
I've done 17"x22" posters that had a 200 dpi full bleed CMYK TIFF in the background. THAT's high res. And compared to video, even that's nothing. The MacOS has a file size limitation of 1.9 gigs, and usually at least once a week I have to work around that.
True, I usually deal in Jpegs. Hi-res jpegs are pleanty high for anything I would need. I agree that video is huge. I'm wondering when we'll get decent video compression, ala mp3 for audio?
MPEG2 is a decent video compression, though like MPEG Layer 3 (the MP3 audio standard) there are noticable artifacts. DVDs use the MPEG2 standard, I think. I use TIFF for anything I plan on editing in the future, since JPEG compression worsens the picture quality every time you load and resave it. LZH-compressed TIFFs are large but not awkwardly so.
Note that MP3s are actually MPEG 1s (layer 3 audio). While there is such a standard as MPEG 3, there's much more interest in the developing standard of MPEG 4.
Thanks for the advice on the free utilities (I don't have photoshop). I do have one I got a long time ago called PhotoMorph which lets me re-touch and make slide-shows, etc. I'll have to go back and see if it'll let me re-size to smaller resolution. Question: If I were to want a frame or two done at poster size (anywhere from 14"x18", 18"x24" or even a bit larger) would you recommend using the 35mm neg or the 1MB jpeg? Many shops take the jpegs over the phone (or on disk) and blow them up very large. _But_, is this either cheaper, or adequate resolution for an "artsy" photo (ie; not commercial art, but to frame and display on the wall).
If you're going to print a JPEG at that size, and it's only one meg, it's probably going to be at a very low resolution, or compressed to the point of severe visible artifacting. Last time I had photo-quality prints made, it was an 8 x 10 and it ended up being at least 25 megs.
I'll be back to this item soon...just returned from a camping trip at
Ludington and had 2 rolls of 35mm and one (35mm) roll from an "underwater"
camera. The river which flows into Lake Michigan was very clear, and I used
snorkle/fins to view the fish and underwater vegitation. actually, i even
did some fishing with a 3' line tied to my finger and a small minnow on a
hook. the fish came right up to me and took the bait...it was cool!
I took several 'close-up' photos with the waterproof camera of sunfish, trout,
bass, crawfish and underwater landscapes. I'm having them scanned ("low-res")
and they should be ready later today. I'll let you know how this turn
out...I'm really excited to see if this worked.
re#44 have you tried using a program called sane (or xsane)? anywho...Im using GIMP 1.0 and it works fine for what I do. my favorite filter is "old photo" it makes your picture look old. another good filter is the "glass lens" it gives a wierd halo look. I usually use GIMP to crop and change the contrast/brightness of pics.
Yeah. My old scanner wasn't supported. My new one *is* supported by SANE, but I can't get it to work; attempting to scan locks the machine solid.
I'm also impressed by the GIMP. It has nice layering and so far it seems to have just about everything phtoshop has except a smaller selection of filters (and I assume Linux hackers are working on those). I haven't been able to find drivers for my Artec parallel port scanner, though. :-(
How would one remove the shadow around one side of an image from a digital camera with on-camera flash? Say, in photoshop? It would be OK to replace it with the adjacent background.
edit it pixel-by-pixel :)
I thought there was a way to select an area of particular characteristic.
Since the shadow is quite distinct from either the background or
objects, isn't it selectable in Photoshop?
editing it pix-by-pix is 8^{, not :)
You can select areas in Paint and copy and paste them. It would be nice if you could paste with a spray gun so that you can feather the paste in and avoit the crisp, patchwork, lines. I'm sure you can do that with a better paint package.
Paint? More info, please.
Microsoft Paint. It comes with Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and others for all I know. I don't have access to a Mac at the moment, so I don't know if you can do it under MacPaint, though I'm pretty sure you can.
It's not bundled with the Mac OS now - wasn't it once? Is there a free/share-ware version of something similar?
No, it never was. I've got lots of paint type applications that came on Macs the I got at PD for $1, bought at auctions or were given to me. I don't know if any of them would run on your iMac. I would not be surprised if there was a freeware package out there.
hmmm..ever notice that the good graphic art magizines such as "Digit" and "Computer arts" are from the UK? [drift on] I hate how the magizines from the UK are not the standard american size. [drift off]
I'm now using the "GIMP" (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) that comes with most Linux distributions. It's pretty cool, loaded with features I'll never get around to figuring out. And the price is certainly right, being essentially free. I've read that it's not quite Photoshop, but for what I do (mostly cropping, resizing, and color adjustment) it's quite complete.
It does beat Photoshop in a few areas. One of my favorites is that it remembers the last directory you opened from and saved to -- SEPERATELY. Photoshop assumes you're reading and saving from the same directory, which isn't usually the case if I'm working on a batch of images. The result is a lot of extra pointing and clicking, in Photoshop. GIMP does have some glaring user interface flaws. For example, it has two File menus. How to get to the more useful one is not immediately obvious. (You have to right-click in the image you're editing.)
I'd like to "overlay" one map image upon another, make the top one semi-transparent, and then adjust the top one's orientation and size so that they register correctly. How do I do this in Photoshop 4? (The photoshop built-in help is nearly useless, assuming you already know the meaning of terms like overlay, merge, channel, etc, while not defining them anywhere. 8^P
Buy a cheap book. There's plenty of them out there, and for the staggering array of features in these sorts of programs you pretty much have to have some kind of friendly guide.
Its all about layering. what i'd do (im using Photoshop 5.5 so it may be differant) is open one of the images; then create a new layer, so you'll have the original on bottom and a new blank layer on top. now open your second image; re-orient and adjust the size of it. now copy that to the blank layer and adjust the opacity slider scale. I used my digital camera to take a picture of a chair; then I set the camera to take a delayed photo, so I could hurry up and sit in the chair. I used photoshop to aligned the photos and changed the opacity so it looks like a ghost of me is sitting in the chair. another cool layering thing is, taking a photo and make identical layers; de-saturate one of the layers (it will be B&W now) and move it to the bottom. now take the color layer on top and cut out what you don't want...so you'll end up having a picture that looks like that girl with the red coat in the movie "shindler's list". (see http://members.fcc.net/eprom/radiocity.jpg)
I figured it out, and came up with something very close to what you describe. I opened both images (each was layer 0), selected an area of one and did a COPY, and then pasted that on top of the other. Viola - two layers. Then it was just a matter of adjusting opacity. Those magic words of select, copy, and paste, are not in the HELP directory, though what they do say makes sense once you know how to do it. (I produced a township map with an semi-transparent overlay of the bedrock geology.)
A PhotoShop question. I take digital pictures, which download in jpeg format. I can open these in Photoshop (4.0.1), and there are a variety of format options for saving them (over a dozen). However if I select a portion of the image and paste it to a new image file, "save as" offers only one option - Photoshop format - for saving. I'd like to save the selection as another jpeg file. How do I do that?
As a generic programming thing, I'd guess that it's still saving undo info or something. Maybe there's an option to finalize or collapse layers or something?
In PhotoShop format it is a 1+ MB image; in JPEG, about 70 KB. The
"save as" menu always shows the full list of options, but some are
"shadowed" and unavailable. All are, except, PhotoShop after I copy
and paste. I did try saving the original image as a TIFF file, then
selecting from that, copying and pasting to a new TIFF file, but then
could not save that as JPEG. So, how do I do what scott says in #79
("finalize" or "collapse"), before I collapse?
The problem is that when you paste something in, it's temporarily put in a different layer, and none of the formats except Photoshop support multiple layers. I think clicking outside the selected area with the selection tool will flatten the image. You can also choose 'Flatten Image' from the 'Layer' menu. You are aware that every time you load and resave an image in JPEG format, you loose a little more sharpness and gain more artifacts, right?
I found it! (i.e., Eureka!). If you use the "Save a Copy" option instead of "Save As", the selection may be saved in most of the available formats. (The problem in discovering these things is you have to try a lot of stuff until one works.). Of course, the online help doesn't offer any help even for "save". I suppose I could run the CD-ROM tutorial...
I'll say it again: For programs like these, even I'll buy a book on how to use it. The $20-$30 is easily justified if it explains only a couple of the things that you are assumed to know (but don't).
OK OK - I'll look for "Photoshop for Dummies". I admit that I have found the manuals for WORD and EXCEL useful on occasions. But, jeezle-peezle, I would think that someone here knows the simple answers to simple questions about these very widely used applications. People here often (usually) ask questions about computers and their use (even about Grex), and they are not usually told to go read a book... 8^}
Well, yes, we often do know the answer and aren't shy about sharing. But still, it's pretty nice to have stuff explained without having to wait for an answer. (I'm *not* trying to discourage questions, just trying to give a more useful long-term answer)
But I wanted the answer *today* - like, right now.... 8^} So I go to my more knowledgeable colleagues and ask. But they don't know. I have suspected for some time, though, that the real problem in getting answers here is a decrease in participation. I initially found it hard to imagine that I was the only person reading this conference that was working with PhotoShop while not being the most knowledgable, but I have since become to suspect that that is the case.
This sort of thing happened in the Music conference not too long ago. Somebody came in talking about what a great fan they were of xxx, and wanting to hear from the experts. Well, that person *was* the expert on xxx, at least on Grex. If you wanted the answer *now*, why did you put it on Grex? ;)
Discouraging question... Where can one put that and similar questions and get answers *now* (or, very soon...)? The vendor sure is not a source of *now* answers.
Some are good, some suck in that regard. Powersoft (before it got sucked into Sybase) used to send out a CD with all their phone help and online (Compuserve, in those days) Q&A in a searchable format. That saved a *lot* of trouble for me.
Is usenet still around? I have found good information there as well as by just searching the internet in general. After trying to diagnose a minor problem with my car, one day I came across the answer on Joe's Garage Q & A web page. However, searching for information on the web is often time consuming and frustrating. It would be nice if there were a better way to find the information that one is looking for.
Usenet is still there, but it's covered with trolls and scams. But if you go deep enough you can still find some useful info.
The usenet lode is mostly panned out - hard to find nuggets among all the gangue.
I've had good luck doing web searches for specific problems, though it depends on whether the question is one that you can easily form a query for. If there's a USENET group that seems appropriate, their FAQ can be a gold mine. And while reading a group regularly means digging through all the trolls and spam (not as bad on some groups as on others), if you pose a question you only have to read your own thread. then it's not so bad.
I imagine if you look hard enough, you can probably find a mailing list on the subject, which will probably be somewhat better than usenet, at least.
I'm trying to understand the difference between the resolution and compression settings on my new Canon A95. Why would you want to take a high-resolution photo and then use high compression?
oooh...thats a really nice camera. Compression is the compactness of the file size, the downside is that your images won't look as sharp, especially if you want to print them. Resolution is the actual pixel count, higher resolution, means the images will be physically larger. Generally the higher the resolution, the bigger the file size will be. from the highest quality to lowest would probably go in this order: 1) High resolution and low compression 2) High resolution and high compression 3) Low resolution and low compression 4) Low resolution and high compression
Would you rather have a programmer deciding you shouldn't have a choice that doesn't make sense? :)
Compression does not necessarily compromise resolution. Compression per-se just makes a file smaller. Uncompress it, and you recover the resolution. Resolution refers to the display; compression to the file size. Some compression techniques do compromise the recovery of resolution, so one has to know the details of the compression routine. PDF applied to word-processing documents is, for example, a file compression routine, which can greatly reduce the file size without sacrificing "resolution" when the file is gain expanded.
Every digital camera I've used has used JPEG compression, which is lossy, so you lose sharpness at higher compression settings. Some cameras offer an uncompressed image format as an option. Canon cameras, for example, usually can store images in their proprietary RAW format, which is not lossy.
Ok...I was assuming it was jpg compression (since that what my Canon G2 does) which does cause some noticable artifacting. There is LZW compression for tiff, which is loseless, but I don't know any cameras currently on the market which do tiff anymore.
re 98: Thanks, that I understand. re 99: As far as I can tell, this camera will not let me download anything in RAW format. re 100: Yes, I think it automatically uses jpeg compression when downloading to my computer.
It uses the jpeg compression to create the files that it later downloads to your computer.
There is more than you want to know about JPEG at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq/part1/
I have two images of a group of people sitting on a low stone wall. In one, A took the image and B sat at the left end of the group. In the other, B took the image with a different camera and A sat at the left end of the group. I would like to cut B out of the first image and paste her onto the left end of the group in the other image, putting "everyone in the picture". The main problem I have is that one image is 478 pixels (ps) by 640 ps, and the other is 2304 ps by 1728 ps, with both at 72 ps/inch but the scenes are essentially identical. How do I scale (in Photoshop) the cut out image of a person to agree with the scale of the other image? I also need to select the image to cut out, for which I presume the lasso tool is needed. Advice on the use of this tool in its three forms (ordinary or polygonal or magnet) would be useful.
Actually, for something like this, I use the brush tool, and go down to the pixel level to select. You can toggle the mask back and forth easily if you make a mistake, and use the same brush tool to deselect the error. When I'm pasting a selection in, I create a transparent area at the desitnation, and then resize the pasted pixels using a separate layer until I get the right look. You can also use the Edit, Paste Into Selection command. When making the selection, use some feathering to help make the seam between the two pieces less visible.
Since I've never attempted this and am unfamiliar with the tools you suggest....I will study what you suggest and see how it goes.
I looked at my image at the pixel level, and the brush tool, and fiddled with it a bit, but don't see how I can use that to cut out the part of the image I want to paste into another picture. Could you enlarge upon how to do this Colleen, "for dummiees"?
Rane, before you can "cut out" anything in Photoshop you have to "select" it. Working at the pixel level to select the parts of the image you want to transfer helps get the shadows and other subtle visual cues transfered to the receiving picture. I use the mask and brush tools to refine my selections after using the lasso tool to make a rough selection. The premise of the selection brush is simple: you paint in the image to create a selection. By toggling the brush you can add or subtract areas of the selection. I usually work back and forth from pixel level to full frame, just to make sure what I'm choosing make sense in the total picture. I use the same lasso-brush tools combination to erase the spot on the receiving picture. Then I use the Edit-->Past Into Selection command to move the sending picture selection into the receiving picture selection.
I have a lot to learn....
Another way to do it, which is easier in some versions of Photoshop, is to paint the parts you don't want some unusual, uniform color, then do a select by color and invert the selection. This is analogous to doing a "green screen" effect in TV. In either case the tedious part is masking out what you want from what you don't. Unless you're really lucky about the color of your subject and the color of your background, you're going to have to do it by hand.
I don't yet understand how to use a method to mask out what I don't want. Then there is the matter of copying and pasting the remainder over what is in the space it will go, so only the image I want covers its new location. (I don't yet understand "layers" and a bunch of the stuff that has been mentioned here - maybe I should take a course.....)
There are some Photoshop tutorials on line, but I don't have any good ones bookmarked right now.
In the making of Star Wars the foundations for the modern techniques were laid. Film an object in front of a uniform green color. Film a background scene. Use (now) computer help to eliminate the green to leave just the object on the film where the rest of the frame will be clear. Use also the computer to invert that step to make a clear object shaped area in the frame for the background scene. Then stack these films on top of each other to build the composite image. You have composite images already so you have to use the tool to cut around the person to move, or paint the rest of that image to simulate the filming in front of green screen. Then the software should allow you to paste on top of the other image to composite. But perhaps you will need also to use some method equivalent to makeing the clear object shaped hole in the destination background.
I just started using iPhoto and am using it to organize and touch up my photos... I used to think that digital photography and touching up the photos was kind of cheating--the end result not being what you actually took. And to some extent, I still feel that way. However, I'm having fun playing around with the program and seeing what I can come with. Is anyone else using iPhoto? And what kind of cool stuff are you doing with it?
If it's cheating, then all the darkroom techniques that photographers use (dodging, burning, etc.) are also cheating...
Hmm, with having had limited access to darkrooms, I never really did much of that. But I see your point. :-)
Here's a nice website with a shortcourse on using your digital camera. Going through the pages will take you from helpless to decent amateur.
http://www.shortcourses.com/use/ Duh!
Thanks, Colleen. I just scanned the headings/content and will go back to read it soon.