Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/09/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Peter, That is a very nice picture, and I do like the tonality. If you don't mind, would you be willing to describe what you did in curves to get the tones? I am familiar with Picture Window Pro and with establishing points on curves, but don't really understand what you did to bring out shadow and highlight detail. Do you bring the detail-rich midtones downward, so you have richness in the dark tones--or bring the lower third of the curve down and the upper third upward, making an exaggerated 'S'--or what? Just explaining this particular detail would be very helpful to me in my own learning curve. Feel free to reply off-line, if you wish. Thank you................Julian - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Klein" <pklein@2alpha.net> To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us> Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 11:47 PM Subject: RE: [Leica] Theatrical shot re.: http://www.2alpha.com/~pklein/oldpics/greasept3.htm Dave: Thanks! The trial version of Picture Window Pro allows 16-bit B&W. I scanned the neg on my Nikon LS-2000 with Vuescan, and then did curves adjustments in PWP until I got it looking right. It needed two intermediate points besides the black and white point, one for shadow detail, and one for highlight detail. It took some very subtle tweaks to the curve. Then I converted to 8-bit, downsampled it it 5:1 for the screen, spotted and applied unsharp mask. The beautiful thing about using curves in 16-bit mode is that it allows you to stretch the tones at both ends to get both highlight and shadow detail, if enough gradation exists on the negative. There's so much more control than just choosing a grade of paper or a single variable contrast filter. I suspect that a skilled user of split printing has a similar amount of control, but with the digital method, you don't waste as much time and paper getting it right. OTOH, my old silver 8x10s of this show have a bit more detail visible than the 2700 dpi scan provides, even blown up to the point where you can see the individual pixels. The old Tri-X grains are just a little bit smaller than the pixels, which means there is some grain aliasing. So you get little blocks instead of gossamer grains. The scans would print acceptably at 8x10 size, but I can see the difference. I use Vuescan's T-Max 400 setting and add "light" grain reduction, and that does reduce the aliasing to an acceptable level. I should eventually save up for a 4000 dpi scanner, I guess. Gee, this digital stuff is almost as big a black hole for money as is Leica stuff. At least the Leica stuff holds value. :-) I'll try to post a couple more good ones from this show in the near future. - --Peter At 01:02 PM 09/11/2001 -0700, Rodgers, David" <david.rodgers@xo.com> wrote: >Nice photograph. Very nice scan, too. Good range of tones, at least when >viewed on my CRT. > >I see b/w images all the time that I think could be improved with curves >adjustments. However, I never know if it's the JPEG or my monitor. >Greasept3.htm, though, looks mighty good.