Digitizing transparencies with a digital camera

[Mark Weidman]

AOK Peter.  I will arrange some samples and post them to my ftp site and send you the link.  Might not be until Monday or later.

Mark

[mguoli]

Mark, thank you for the advice to watch this thread, I was already reading it because I'm still in doubt on what method to use between a Scan and RRS.
More, I'm an Alamy contributor too, so your thread interesting me a lot.

Could I ask you if you already check one thread of mine, KEYWORDING SOFTWARE?
I'm so surprised that nobody reply yet; may be you have some info to share about it.

I saw your site: great job, you are a master of light.

Marco

[peterkrogh]

Mark,
Looking at a few of these quickly on my laptop, I think what I'm seeing is just a difference in the amount of sharpening. The "grain" I see looks more like sharpening artifacts, at least on this computer. And the softness I saw in the rejected runner photo is in both copies of the image. (Although there is extra sharpening applied to the Nikon scan).

And remember that just because a scanner says it is not sharpening an image, does not mean that it is not applying any sharpening.

Looking at another - 43766 looks sharper to me on the camera scan.

Peter

[Mark Weidman]

Peter

You may be correct about the scanner doing some kind of sharpening, even though I have all filters turned off.  That "grain" in the Nikon scans is apparent even before I apply sharpening using the Pixel Genius Sharpening tool.  Even at that, I find the PGS tool for 35mm scanned film too aggressive, I back off the sharpening layer to about 25%.  I was able to apply the capture sharpening 100% to the Camera Scans.  I will take another look at the files but let me know if you have a chance to examine them more closely.

Mark Weidman

[mguoli]

Mark, I will wait for a Peter definitve opinion about your rejected files, but definitly I think is a must to clear the Exif Data in certain situations.

Sharing Exif data with someone that you do not know, and who is judging the quality of your file is shure one.

I set-up a workflow in preparing deliverys High Reoslutions for Alamy without any Exif data since the first submission.
When I saw your post at the beginning, I do not even thought that your submission was send with Exif Data embedded, and more if is a scan.
Exif Data can distort the objectivity of an evaluation; just think about aperture, shutter and iso. Or, in your case, a scan method not conventional/accepted yet.

Marco

[Mark Weidman]

Question for Bob Smith and anyone else.

How do I strip the EXIF data from my image files?  I used Adobe Bridge CS4 for adding metadata and also Expression Media 2.

Mark Weidman

[mguoli]

Mark, the most simple way to do it is with Expression Media: ACTION/Convert Image Files. In the Options, uncheks "Store/Embed EXIF and GPS Data".
I can not write the exact words because I use Expression Media in italian, so look for some similar words. The incredible thing is that you can choose if you want to strip only the EXIF data, only the annotations, or both; so you can strip EXIF but leave embedded the IPTC info. Also interesting, if you are submitting for Alamy, you can fine tunes the maximum size of the compressed jpg (no more than 25MB) with the Quality options. Setting just a 99% of quality resolve all the problems of the super big files of the 5D Mark II.

My workflow: prepare the file in ACR, save in tiff, import in Expression Media, convert in jpg original dimension/Max Quality/No Exif Data.
Before this workflow I use an action of CS4 that involve SAVE FOR WEB AND DEVICE (When you export you have the option to strip EXIF Data) but EM is much more simple and the quality of jpg is identical (I test it).

The last way I know is copying the file and paste it into a brand new one, but is not suitable for batch workflow, or at least it will be complicated.

Marco

[Mark Weidman]

Hi Marco

Thanks for the explanation, I will give it a try!

Cheers

Mark W.