On 2/21/2014 12:14 PM, Tina Manley wrote:
> But that's what I don't like! I don't want smooth and smeary looking.
Ah, that's not what you said. "I will be glad when software can reduce the
grain but not soften the image!"
If you look at the actual few areas with detail, it is retained, as asked for.
It looks 'smooth' because there is very little actual detail in the film. As to
smeary, I think it's the same thing; you
want some grain. If you look at the printing and her silhouetted hair, they are
as detailed or more as the original.
> I would like the look of film but without pebble-sized grain.
I'm not seeing this kind of effect in some of your other TMAX 400 shots. Here,
for example, there's decent detail and
the original grain has nicely retained its size relative to the image. A little
bit of grain to add texture and a film
look. All rather nice. <http://www.pbase.com/image/141811236>
It looks like this particular image had wildly underexposed shadow areas.
<http://tinamanley.smugmug.com/Central-America/Honduras/Honduras/3917411_sWqp63#%21i=1213147304&k=sdXz2CS&lb=1&s=L>
Pulling them up has revealed lots of scanner noise, which you are incorrectly
identifying as film grain. Look, and you
will see that there is almost no 'grain' in the bright areas, and lots of noise
in the dark areas. Perhaps some advice
from AG and/or CH on scanner/software settings might help? Or there may just be
nothing there on the neg.
It seems what you really want is to change the scanner noise into film grain, I
don't know any way other than to clear
up the original noise and add back simulated grain.
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/Others/Manley/Homework.htm>
This is far from perfect; I'm not going to do all the edges and subtleties
carefully on a small JPEG. But it should give
an idea what I'm talking about. I could have retained the film grain in the
bright areas, but then it wouldn't match
that in the shadow areas, where noise has been removed and grain added back. I
particularly needed consistent grain
across faces, going from originally clean bright areas to originally noisy
areas.
There are several steps and choices in the process, so many different results
could be reached.
I did try the idea Chuck (and others?) proposed, of adding back grain using PS.
There are very few choices in that tool
and even Gaussian distribution looked artificial to me. I used PerfectEffects,
B&W, None, TMAX 400 grain, 50/50, which
looks much more like film grain to me.
> NeatImage just looks smeary to me.
As above, that's a matter of taste; you want the appearance of film and the
illusion of detail that noise/grain add. I
don't think you will find an NR program that specifically reduces noise and
replaces it with grain.
> My favorite dust and scratch remover is the old
> Polaroid Dust and Scratch Remover but it only works in 32 bit PS so I keep
> a 32 bit PS on my computer just for that one program. It removes dust
> without smearing but doesn't remove the grain.
Again, you mentioned nothing about dust and scratch removal. That is not what
any of the NR programs are designed to do,
so of course they don't give you the results you want. I tried that long ago;
no go.
For sliver B&W film, I don't know of any really good solution other than great
care to clean negs and hand spotting,
annoying and time consuming as it is.
Since you pointed me to the Polaroid plug-in, I've played with it a bit, and
not been much impressed. Finding settings
that clean up the D&Ss without adversely affecting image detail is tricky and
not always possible.
I can only see using it as a layer to paint in on specific areas. It can be
amazing on low detail areas like sky. Here,
settings that clean up the sky perfectly destroy huge amounts of detail in the
landscape.
<http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/Others/BSwale/Home2_dipton-srp15-1200px.htm>
Selectively Grainy Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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