Re-cycled colour slides

Littletank

Littletank

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Norman
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Following on from the interesting discussion on another thread here are two images that I have recently processed. They start as old commercial colour slides which have not been kept in very good conditions. Thus colours, are distorted and scratches and other little defects have to be dealt with. Slides were scanned using a Nikon Coolscan iV and VueScan software. Scanned images were then converted to B&W, cropped and processed.

Commednts and criticism on processing would be most welcome, thank you.

Floating restaurant in Hong Kong

5p4uqa.jpg


Ruins at Pompeii

wjylid.jpg
 
Well the pictures look ok to me, and any criticism would be just nit picking so (y)
 
Thank you, Brian, for your comments however, if the nits are valid and helpful then pick them by all means.
 
Littletank said:
Thank you, Brian, for your comments however, if the nits are valid and helpful then pick them by all means.
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Well OK.... the first one (to me) looks a bit over sharpened causintg pixel breakup and the 2nd blotches in the sky and a white blob at the base of the column...but lets face it, 500 million people around the world probably wouldn't notice it or care ;)
 
Thank you again, Brian, very helpful comments. I can see what you mean about the second one but how do I identify pixel breakup so that I can avoid it in the future, please?
 
Littletank said:
Thank you again, Brian, very helpful comments. I can see what you mean about the second one but how do I identify pixel breakup so that I can avoid it in the future, please?
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Well Norman I assume you adjust everything in Photoshop or similar.......well if I scan myself I sharpen (most times) before the image become "grainy\noise" (you can see this in preview before pressing the OK button)......it's difficult to say when sharpening if enough or too much as some subjects can take a lot of sharpening others not so much, also if the shot or original photo scanned was taken by a poor lens then you could sharpen more before it looks odd.....but using a sharp lens and good film you have to be careful as e.g. a bare tree in winter it can look odd just sharpened a small amount.
Once you have over sharpened there is no going back other than rescan, but if the picture can take it, you could soften by reducing contrast or denoise but using PS denoise starts to turn it into a digital shot......but then it's the final result that counts so if it works then that's all that matters.

This about as for as I would go for sharpening in this shot


when you well oversharpen it leads to all sorts of problems esp brightness and contrast and the pixels are all wierd
 
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I've added some pics to show what happens if you over do the sharpening to a ridiculous amount but is proves a point......and don't forget Norman it's just my opinion (nit picking) on your photos and others my disagree...also if the original photo was not top quality it would take some experience to get a very good result and then it might not be possible....enjoy your hobby.
 
excalibur2 said:
Well OK.... the first one (to me) looks a bit over sharpened causintg pixel breakup and the 2nd blotches in the sky and a white blob at the base of the column...but lets face it, 500 million people around the world probably wouldn't notice it or care ;)
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Well spotted, Brian. The first one grated for me also for over-sharpening, and you can also see some halos in the second (another over-sharpening side effect). I wonder if the sky blotches in the second were perhaps a result from dust removal with a spotting tool? The white blob might be in source rather than an artefact... (see also top right of the first?).

A very nice idea though, Norman. Now, what about taking two complementary slides and doing an overlay for a "double exposure" effect (either in the scanner or, easier, in post)? That could let you exercise a bit more personal creativity on the source material available... just a thought.
 
Thank you Chris for the suggestion I will see what I can find. With regard to the sky blotches in the second could this be due to poor brush work? The sky was really boring so I tried selectively darkening it using a mask and I found it particularly difficult to be selective around stonework. Is there some way to facilitate this sort of processing?
 
i just noticed the resturants name...

the ugly skys could be bad jpg compression
the spot heal brush could be good for sky cleanup (j key) in photoshop, itll keep the grain structure better than clone stamp
 
Thanks Paul for the tip about the spot heal brush.

I am curious, what is particular about the name of the restaurant, from what I could find out is it not also the name of a Hong Kong race course?
 
Move the space between the words one place to the right?
 
Very amusing, Chris, now you have pointed this out I shall be on the look out for more laughs.
 
Also if the results count then try Photoshop's reduce noise or similar programs...the first snap was just a Tesco dev and scan (in house) and I played with the neg and re scanned for a crop to see what happens with reduce noise, well it cleaned it up but looked a bit digital waxy but still might be useful for some copied slides etc and the result might look better.





 
It's very interesting to see the results of noise reduction but I get the feeling that this needs to done selectively. Quite a lot of detail has gone from the stone work giving too smooth a look to the buildings.
 
Littletank said:
It's very interesting to see the results of noise reduction but I get the feeling that this needs to done selectively. Quite a lot of detail has gone from the stone work giving too smooth a look to the buildings.
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Well yes,but it's all about using any tool\program available to get the final result you want...e.g. some guys would copy a slide using a digital camera and go from there.
 
I think I get the drift of your argument, Brian, it all depends on the end result that is being sought. My objective is to try to create an image which I like and which others will like too, from material which would otherwise have been thrown away.
 
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