Just wanted to share

[Anthony]

I just wanted to share this with everyone. I received this pic from a friend of mine. An old family photo that was about 2x4 printed on metal and hand colorized. Its not complete yet, but I was just so happy that it took me about 15 minutes to get to this point. I guess this was a good day. I have also been reading Katrin Eismann's "Restoration & Retouching" as if it were my bible. I suggest it to everyone.

I scanned in the image at 600 dpi and 8x10. The first thing I did was duplicate the original layer, create an adjustment layer and select levels, moved the sliders way to to left and threw away some unnecessary information, which brought out the colors and contrast that cannot be seen in the original. It also brought out all of the scratches in the background. I selected the upper background, and ran dust & scratches on it until most of the scratches and spots disapeared. Now I have some minor (maybe not so minor) clone stamp work to do and work on the edges. Normally I would have fiddled with other adjustments which would have taken alot more time to get to this point. I have others if anyone is interested.

I do have a question - I always scanned my images in at 600 or 720, then I am afraid to reduced them. Result is my 30G harddrive is filling up fast. Is there any rule for this?

[winwintoo]

Wow Anthony that is amazing - don't you love a job like that. It looks impossible, but a bit of tweaking and it starts to come together.

When I'm working on a photo, I tend to save into a new document whenever I've reached a "milestone" in the process. As a result, I have several copies of 50 MB files - needless to say, I too run into a space problem.

I keep my work for each month in a separate file and keep a text file "index" with descriptions of each document in that same file folder. At the end of the month, I go through and save the original of each project and the end result and delete the intermediate steps. Then I copy the index document and put it in a file with other month's indexes so I always have it available if I want to find anything. Then I burn that month's project files to CD and delete them off my hard drive.

The index documents are invaluable - that way I can always tell how to find a particular project and the actual pictures are safe on CD.

I tried other ways, and could never find anything - this way works for me - keeps my HD clean and everything is still easy to find.

Hope this helps,
Margaret

[Anthony]

Thanks Margaret,
I will try that - sounds like a good idea.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Anthony,
That is very impressive work especially knowing you did it in 15 minutes. I think your frien with be thrilled with it.
As to the question of how large to scan at, that's a tough one to answer but I would say that if you scanned that image at 600dpi and a size of 8x10 that is really pretty big. I would generally say about 300dpi is enough unless your finished printed size is meant to be a movie size poster. You really don't gain much by making the files that big if you only plan to print an 8x10 anyway and it makes working on the file soooooo sluggish not to mention the huge amount of memory needed to store it. I usually scan all mine at 300 dpi and have had no problem. It's pretty much a decision you have to make though based on your intended output size.
DJ

[Ed_L]

That looks impressive to say the least. If you want to print an 8 X 10 image @ 300 ppi, you will need a file that is 2400 X 3000 pixels. If you want to print it at 240 ppi, you need a file that is 1920 X 2400 pixels (8 times 240 = 1920, and 10 times 240 = 2400). I have also heard of people who are satisfied with a little less, but 240 ppi seems to be the lower limit of professional acceptability. Run a test at different resolutions, then check them to see if you can see a difference in them. That's my advice, but others might not agree with that.

Ed

[Anthony]

Thank you - your advice will save me alot of time and space. Sometimes its very frustrating, but I have been afraid to shrink any of the images. I have these humongous files. I will run a test first - but somewhere between 240 and 300 seems like a good suggestion.