Before we even get to the specific problem you ask about, Don't you
often look a a print and say "That's not at all what I remember it
looking like!"? I have some shots of rolling green hills dotted with
trees of different greens. Everything in the scene was shades of green,
but the automated prints have no true greens at all. The computer tried
to balance it to some standard, be it 18 0ray or a proprietary standard
for regular snapshots and failed. When I scan and print these, I have to
rely on my memory of what green spring hills in California look like to
guide me back to something approaching the scenes I saw. My TOPE 10
entry is of a scene predominantly darker, with some highlights. The
autoprinter dutifully brightened it up like it was in the sun.
People who shoot slides (as I mostly did for years), tend to use the
slide as reference to what the scene really looked like when printing
them. However, both experience, reading al the discussions here and
elsewhere about the color, saturation, contrast, etc., etc.
characteristics and reading photo magizine film tests with the color
reproductions of standard targets shot with different films make it
clear that this is not really a reliable standard either. The truth is
that there is no way on earth to know just what that scene looked like
when the picture was taken. There is no reference color capturing system
which is perfect.
I have the luxury of scanning directly from the negatives with all
balancing turned off, but still have essentially the same problem you
do. Some scans come out looking just the way I remember the scene and
others don't match my memory/idea at all. My answer is to try to
reproduce the scene in some kind of combo of my memory and what I think
looks realistic for the kind of image at hand. Trying to match what's on
the screen to a print that's not right anyway sounds crazy making. I've
been working on developing the ability to see the potential below the
surface in dull looking or weird colored standard prints.
Remember Ansel Adams and many other famous photographers manipulated
their images extensively to get the picture the saw in their heads,
rather than the imperfect image the science of photography produced
unaided by human artistry and imagination. My rule that I commend to you
is make it look real and/or make it look good, in whatever combination
suits you. In the last 4 shots on
<http://home.attbi.com/0.000000E+00dreammoose/wsb/html/view.cgi-photos.html-MerchantID-50215-Publish-t-makestatic-true-skip-10.html>
, 3 follow the 'realisitc' side of the equation and one the 'look good'
side.All the original prints look crummy.
Moose
Brian Swale wrote:
Hi folk,
I wonder if any of you have faced and dealt with this problem.
When I scan images, they are always from prints, on a flat-bed scanner.
So I have no idea if the print-maker has the colour right. The scanning
software and the post-scanning imaging software then throw a few wobblies
into the image-making process. Not least of these is during the conversion
from whatever patented format the program uses, to jpeg.
Another source of error arises in the colour temperature of the light I use
when comparing the print with the on-screen image. Unless I have access to
good daylight from a window to the side, I have only an incandescent bulb
which emits light that is obviously yellow.
All of these things make it difficult to adjust the light level, the contrast and
the colours on the digital image so that it represents the reality at the time of
exposure.
What do you use for a white-light source?
Brian
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