 James Wolosin |
Worsening photo quality with image editing I shoot in 35 mm format with a canon slr but have been scanning my negatives with a canoscan fs2720u scanner. I am very happy with the scanner but the more that I edit the images with photoshop LE, the grainier and less sharp the images become. Also, I am not entirely happy with prints from my HP970cse even at the 5x7 range. They are OK but just don't seem to have the quality that I am used to from standard photo processing even though I scan and print at very high resolutions. What am I doing wrong or is this what I should expect??
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Jeff Galbraith |
Hi James, I can't comment on the quality of prints you are getting from your printer, as I have no experience with the printer that you are using. However, the image quality loss that you are experiencing may be a result of editing compressed image files (JPEG.) If this is the case, try saving your original scan as a TIF (which is a non- compressed image format) then do your image editing. The non-compressed image files suffer very little, if any, quality loss compared to compressed files during editing. Hope this helps.
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James Wolosin |
Thanks for the response. I am saving the files as either .psd (photoshop) or .bmp not jpeg. JW
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doug Nelson |
Jeff's response was the first thing I thought of, too. If, in Image/Image Size,you have a resolution of at least 240 ppi when you scale the image to 5 x 7, you're OK there. Recently in my learning curve, I found that I was over-manipulating some images. I wonder if certain Photoshop operations are more destructive than we think. To minimize image degredation, scan at a high resolution and also at the highest color bit depth you can. Do your tonal corrections (Levels OR Curves, not both)BEFORE changing in Image Mode to the 8-bit mode. Look at your histogram after you have the tones the way you want them. If there are no gaps showing no information in those places, then you've done it right. If you see a snaggle-tooth effect, you've over-manipulated the image and degraded it. I've over-used such tools as the rubber stamp and Dust and Scratches to the point of ruining an image. Look at Wayne's comments on sharpening at scantips.com. He will tell you how to pull this off without ruining image quality.
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Piper Lehman |
I wonder if you are printing from your raw image or after compressing. I learned the hard way that printing a compressed image is a waste of time. I'm sure there are others out there who know how to do this correctly, but I've never been able to get a good print from a compressed image no matter how large the image or small the print size. Doug, is it an actual file compression when printing, say, a 5x7 print size from a big file? If I print from the original scanned size, I get a better-looking image than if I squash it down to size in PS. Does this make any sense?
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doug Nelson |
If you use the Image/Image Size screen and keep Resample unchecked, reducing the image dimensions should not give you a worse print. The total pixels will be squashed into a smaller space, which should give you a better print. After doing that, you might even bump up the dpi final print setting in your printer driver to deliver an even better print. Don't do any compression at all, JPEG or LZW (for TIF) until you get ready to either post the image on the web or save it to some storage medium where space matters. CD's are so cheap, it's best to archive your images as full size TIF's or as PSD's, if you want to preserve layers.
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Piper Lehman |
Doug, I think this is essentially what I am doing, only in a different way. After I scan the image, I'm not saving it or anything before I print. When I go to print preview, I manipulate the dimensions using only the inches-by-inches tool in the preview box. The pixel size stays the same, as does the file size since I'm not changing the actual file in any way. As long as the file is around 300ppi to start with, I'm okay for 5x7's, right? I really hate this. Makes my head hurt...
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James Wolosin |
Thanks for all the input. I have been trying to keep it simple and have not been using the histograms. Rather I have been using the color adjust tools as well as brightness and sharpening tools. I think that the latter may be causing some of the problems.
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Abigail Klinton |
Hi there I have never tried to edit an image .But I am planning to get a powerful image program which supports to edit image directily.I have got a free trial package from this image program； http://www.rasteredge.com/how-to/csharp-imaging/ It is amazing.But it is expensive.Is there any cheap one?Thanks a lot.
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