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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
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Thursday, August 21, 2003
The Menagerie of Pictures I did pick up some albums from my mom's house last night. I have twelve of them now between 1968 to 1974 and 1985 to 1988. Even though I love scanning the old pictures, I figure I needed some newer content, especially my early college years. You'd think that scanning pictures is pretty brainless. Most of the time, the actual scanning doesn't require much thought, but the filtering and cropping after the fact takes a little time. This last batch was different. My mom has eight of the ancient albums (circa 1968 - 1974) with pictures all over the place. There was no chronological order. I just couldn't stomach having a picture of me on my 3rd birthday, then the next picture is one of me suckling on the teet. So I took all the pictures out of four of the albums (96+72+72+72) and spent two hours sorting them in the best order I could possibly muster. It was a nightmare, since many of the pictures had the time stamp cut off. I had to put on my private eye hat and pay attention to the clothes that my parents and I were wearing. And even with the timestamps and clothing grouping, I still had to make some "best-guesses" on the order of "batches" of pictures. Anyway, it makes me feel better that the pictures are in some sort of chronological order in my albums, as well as the physical albums. I couldn't have it any other way. The Mechanics of Scanning and Imaging The pictures in these albums are tiny... they measure only 3.5" X 3.5", and many of them are so faded, they're ready for a landfill. I'm amazed at how much information can still be found digitally on these pictures! I'm scanning them between 360 - 600 dpi, depending on if I'm doing a "zoom-n-crop". Almost all of the pictures are scanned at 360 dpi, which give me pictures that yield around 1200 X 1200 pixels. I'm also scanning with the "unsharp mask" feature checked, which is a mild sharpening filter that very lightly adjusts the contrast to make a picture appear clearer. For scanning, I basically place six pictures on the platen at once, do a "preview", then manually crop-n-scan each picture. After all the pictures are scanned, I then review the pictures via ACDSee, and determine what type of filtering is required. Almost all of the pictures get hit with the "sharpen" filter between 100% - 150%. "Sharpening" usually makes the picture appear grainy, so sometimes I apply the "despeckle" filter. I haven't been using that filter too much, since it's probably just the opposite of "sharpen". Then, I apply the "auto-level" filter, which to me, is a miracle of digital imaging. It really brings out the colors and adjusts the picture to what it "should" look like. Since most of the pictures have suffered from 30+ years of aging and fading, I apply a slight increase of "saturation" to make the picture look a little more vibrant. I don't do it all the time. Finally, I then resize the picture so the maximum pixel dimension is 640 pixels and then "auto-level" one last time. I also keep the master pics that were scanned at 1200 X 1200, just in case I ever want to make prints (which will probably be never). I think I need medication for my OCD. I wish I was this excited about work. posted by Dino at 12:04 PM (permanent link) |