Advice for non-digital

[spitfire-ian]

I often admire all the pictures that are taken with digital slr cameras. However I am not in the position to justify the expense of buying one so have to really on good old film. That means if I want to have my pictures on a website or even just on my PC I need to either get the film developed with a CD or scan the negatives or pictures themselves. Which leads me to the question, how can I make the colours in my scanned pictures look better? I have Photoshop CS but can't seem to get anything looking right, no matter how much I play with levels and things, though I must admit I haven't a clue what I'm doing.

For example, what can I do with a picture like this?



Any suggestions would be appreciated

[V6GTO]

3 minutes on a lap-top...



Martin.

Edited by V6GTO on Tuesday 6th June 01:09

[spitfire-ian]

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm after and it wasn't that great a picture to start with. How is it done?

[V6GTO]

Ian,
It would take all night to write it down

The best advise I can give is start by reading some of these tutorials...

http://ronbigelow.com/articles/articl

...then move on to some of the other stuff in the stickies.

I used levels,saturation,contrast,measure tool (to straighten the horizon), colour balence, magic wand, dodge, burn and unsharp mask. It could do with noise reduction too but I'm on the lap-top on my terrace and the noise software I have is on the main PC in the bedroom (and if I go in there I'll wake up MrsPotatohead}

I can't rccomend highly enough the book "Photoshop for digital photographers" by Scott Kelby.

Martin.

Edited by V6GTO on Tuesday 6th June 01:29

[J111]

The most immediate fixes, to a sharp and clean image, are levels (this is Elements, but the same applies in CS):

Take the sliders to the ends of the histogram 'peaks', then adjust the middle slider to taste.

and saturation:


To give:

[V6GTO]

PS - also used the clone tool to lose all the spots and that bl00dy great scratch at the top.

Martin.

[mr noble]

I used to shoot on slide film like Velvia and then scan it using an £80 odd film scanner. You'll get much better results.

www.jessops.co.uk have a hunt around here for them.

G

[poah]

plug in called velvia vision from fred miranda works wonders as does using a gradiant filter in PS (or on camera)

[LongQ]

spitfire-ian said:

Which leads me to the question, how can I make the colours in my scanned pictures look better?

Hmm. "Better" is something related to the eye of the beholder.

There have been any number of books written about this subject so no point in repeating them here. But you are dealing with a lot of variables both on the film and digital side of things.

For example your scanned original picture, despite the inevitable reduction in subtle details resulting from the scanning process, appears to retain more dark area detail than any of the modified versions (on my monitor).

That is in line with what you would expect from modifying an already 'selective' scan previously crushed for web display. But beyond that 'purists' would say that the processing (indeed the perceived limitations of dynamic range of digital compared to film) is taking subtlety away from the scene. But you or I might see that as colour improvement and a benefit if we feel the original looks a little flat.

The upside for digital is that, at least for a relatively static subject, you can creatively extend the dynamic range of a scene by shooting at different exposures and then combining the images. Apparently. Not something I have tried and my attempts to follow the process concept have not resulted in success so far. But I have seen soem results which do look rather stunning.

How a 35mm frame looks depends on the film, how it was shot and how it was processed. Three basic variables all of which are quite difficult to keep consistent.

The digital image, from camera or scanned from a negative or positive, has potentially many more variables at creation, including whatever processing is applied in camera or by the scanning process.

Since it is unlikely that any image truly represents what we 'see' - the eye being a continually adapting visual medium whereas the photographic image is not - taking any image and changing it for effect seems to be OK. It's just a matter of understanding the trade-offs in the processes of enhancement. The most common trade-off using any medium relates to dynamic range. Basically the balance between how much detail you want to see in the dark and the bright areas. Even these considerations will be compromised by the limitations of monitors and printers (or fume room print processes using older methods) so it really comes down to working out what adjustments suit your personal preferences.

Most default digital output seems to include enhanced sharpness, contrast and colour settings designed to be pleasing to the eye perhaps more than to be 'accurate' representations of the scene or subject. Some manufacturers seem to major on 'bright and bold' more than others.

As for 35mm scans, typical highstreet scans exhibit a high degree of colour enhancement, contrast and sharpening and may well produce very adequate prints up to a little smaller than A4. But from a reasonable negative or positive it is often possible to extract more subtle detail to work with if desired. If you want to crop part of the image and still print large the standard highstreet scan is unlikely to offer enough - unless you use somewhere that will provide a range of high resolution scans as part of their process. They tend to be expensive from what I have seen. Whether there is a difference in film processing I don't know but the chances are that if film processing differences are minimal the investment in a photo scanner for digitising the images might be a better way to go.

On the other hand the same sort of investment might buy a very capable digital SLR these days, so the only real justification for the scanner approach for 35mm work is a desire to digitise a back-catalogue of images.

On the other hand if you were working in a larger format the investment for a digital back would be such that film would likely still be a better way to go unless you are working professionally and can justify the investment and claim some cost back through tax relief.