NVMUG eNews 11/15/2003
Last updated 11/19/2003
Setting Up A Digital Darkroom
NVMUG Members discussed setting up a digital darkroom with Chip Troiano who will be buying a Macintosh to scan his 35-mm film and produce 11 x 14 inch prints.
1. The Caledonian - NVMUG Focuses On Photos
2. Other Meeting News and Related Notes
3. Photoshop Elements 2 H-O-T
Review (in reviews)
4. Other New Library Books (see Reviews)
1. At November Meeting: NVMUG Focuses On Photos
Members looking at new NVMUG library books in St. Johnsbury Saturday are, from left, Ruth Hay, Stephen Farber, Richard Lubot. Midge Lubot and Geof Gonter.
As reported in the Caledonian Record, Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Members of the Northern Vermont Macintosh Users Group discussed setting up a digital darkroom at their meeting in St. Johnsbury Saturday.
Chip Troiano is a photographer who primarily uses a 35-mm cameras with special fine grain film. He has a substantial film collection, and sells and exhibits large 11 x 14 inch prints. He has been using custom commercial printers, but has not been satisfied with some of their prints. He wants to buy a Macintosh computer and set up his own digital darkroom. He plans to scan his transparencies and then print them himself using a color printer.
Midge Lubot, NVMUG's President, had suggested that Troiano talk to the folks at Small Dog, an Apple retailer in Waitsfield. The people at small Dog recommended that he buy an eMac, and spend most of his money on a really good scanner and printer.
Troiano wanted to know what the photographers in NVMUG thought.
NVMUG members agreed that a higher end eMac would handle the photo editing that Troiano would be doing, The CRT video display is generally considered to have better color accuracy than the flat LCD screens. Stephen Farber said Troiano should be sure to use the Macintosh color sync.
All the members said he should have the maximum RAM installed because he may need all that working memory when working with larger images. Warren Walker said that if you are working with a 100 meg image in Photoshop, you should have 500 megs of memory.
Stephen Farber asked if he had considered a middle range G5 Macintosh which would have nearly unlimited expandability - all you could ever use. He recommended connecting it to a Sony Artisan Monitor which comes with own color calibrator. The monitor alone would cost a little less than the eMac, but more accurate color calibration could save on printing costs and time.
The Macintosh G5 computer can have added monitors so that you can see the full screen image on one monitor and the Photoshop palettes and tools on the other screen. We were not sure if the eMac could display on a second monitor and whether the second display would just be a mirror of the eMac display. (On a PowerBook you can display a second different screen, on an iBook the separate monitor can only mirror what is on the iBook's LCD screen.)
After discussion, it was agreed that for Troiano the eMac would make the most sense for the next three years, and after that if he needed something more he could upgrade.
The Minolta 5400 and the Nikon 4000 film scanners were recommended to give the high optical resolution Troiano would need. Troiano likes the Minolta 5400 because he has had good experience with their cameras.
Optical resolution and bit depth are important criteria in selecting quality scanner. Bit depth sets the range of red, green, and blue color channels that the scanner can reproduce. Both of these scanners qualify.
It has taken longer for scanners than for printers get the latest drivers. Drivers are the programs they need to work with newer operating systems. Before buying a scanner, make sure it will work with Mac OS 10.3 Panther
The recommended printer was Epson Styles Photo 2200 which will print on up to 13 x 44 inch sheets or rolls of paper. The images have a 75-year longevity on any paper, and longer on special Epson paper. Walker is thinking of converting to it for printing the wild flower pictures that he sells.
Troiano plans to start his editing using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 because he can get up and running faster. The learning curve with Elements 2 is less steep than with Photoshop 7.
Walker learned Photoshop 5 using a very large book and practicing all the tutorials. He now uses Photoshop 7. Harley Jackson recommended that Troiano use a new book just added to the NVMUG library, Adobe Photoshop Elements Hands-On-Training by Shane Rebenschied which consists of tutorials for the Elements program. Troiano could do the few tutorials at the front of the book to learn general concepts, and then just use those tutorials that applied directly to what he wanted to do.
After the meeting members browsed the latest library books and talked about their latest news.
2. Other Meeting News and Related Notes<
Chip talks with members about his needs
Warren said what you see on paper will never look the same as on the monitor no matter how perfectly it is calibrated, so the question is if the output is what you want to see. Photoshop can display the color numbers on the monitor showing exactly what will be sent to the printer.
Warren said that on this printer he gets about forty 8 x 10" prints from $30 worth of ink.
Slide film has the best dynamic range. Something will be lost in the scanning and printing process. Correct exposure is important. If you blow out the highlights or shadows, you may be able to adjust to get an image of what was there, but the dynamic range is gone.
You want the best scan you can get. It is better not to use the dust cleaner feature when scanning. Correct it later if you have to using Photoshop, Photoshop Elements 2, or similar so you can control the process.
How much editing should you do? There is a professional who gets $200 an hour to edit photos pixel by pixel, which leaves no evidence behind. Others convert photos to art work which no longer looks like a photo. Warren sometimes deliberately over corrects an image, then works back until the photo looks natural.
When Warren took a picture of a Blue Flag Iris, the picture was purple. He had to adjust it to the blue it had when he looked at it. I have had the same problem with pictures of blue flowers. Now I know what to do.
FireWire is an advantage when you are working with large images for both scanners and printer, but specially scanners.
Richard Lubot suggested that Chip back up his pictures to CD, but save the most used 200 or so on an external hard disk for ready access. Warren said that he will want to save the adjusted images after he has put in all that work. One CD may hold only 4 or 5 very large images - but that is still cheap.
I have been backing up my iPhoto images to a hard drive, then moving them to a CD when I had enough to nearly fill the CD.First dragged the images into iPhoto Albums. Then do a select-all and drag an album full of images to a CD to be burned. It works like a charm, but it is not magic. I apparently did not drag the photos of our hike over Mount Moosilauke into my hiking album, so they did not get burned on the CD. I doubt if I can talk the other Half-Fast mountain climbers into hiking the nine miles again so I can take the pictures over.
Members discuss digital darkroom ideas.
A Scanner
Note: Chip needs an expensive scanner and printer because he needs fine grain 11 x 14" prints. I asked a friend who has been scanning his collection of photographs what he uses. I thought he was using a Nikon film scanner. Here is what he had to say:
Actually Jim, I have a HP S20 scanner, not a Nikon. After 6000+ scans I can attest to its usefulness. I'm very pleased with the scans it produces insofar as color accuracy, definition, and overall image quality is concerned. This scanner has one big advantage over other slide scanners in that it can scan prints up to 5X7 inches, and does a nice job with them as well. As of now, I have exactly 6,700 photos on my hard drive. The combination of this scanner and the HP 1315 printer produces beautiful prints.
One other note; Kodak will drop production of its Carousel slide projectors next year thus ending a product line that goes back to 1954. While there will probably be a market for film for the foreseeable future, there's no question that digital will predominate in an overwhelming way.
Click on the arrow pointer to see the handles, and drag these handles to set the the layout.
To create a linked frame, click the black triangle at the bottom of the first linked frame. Go to where you would like the text to continue and drag diagonally to create a text frame that is linked to the first one. Circles in the little top and bottom rectangles indicate a link.
(The HP S20 scanner is comparable to the Nikon LS30 which only scans 35-mm. They both have 36-bit depth and can scan at 2400 dpi, which I have read is good enough for 8 x 10 inch prints.)
Adding Photos to AppleWorks
Ted Birmingham is learning AppleWorks. He dragged a photo into a word processing document with no trouble, but when he tried to drag it into a drawing document and a painting document the photo was way to large to fit on the page. We told him that there are at least two solutions.
The next time he drags in a photo that is too large he can go to the Arrange menu, and select Scale by Percent. The default is 50% which is a good place to start. Just repeat scaling by 50% until the picture fits. If it is too small, undo a step. Then scale by any other percentage to get the size you want.
Or use a program like Photoshop Elements 2 and use Image/ Resize to set the dimensions you want, then save as PICT before dragging it into AppleWorks.
Ted also had trouble with a second photo being placed right on top of the first when he pasted them in. The trick here is simply to click the Arrow pointer tool, then click where you will want the photo to go before you paste it.
