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Photo Scanning and Editing

Preservation Issues

Some points on size re scanning slides 

It has taken me some time but I think I have a workable method.
My mother left me some albums and lots of loose photos and then I have our own photos and slides and negatives. 
Unfortunately my mother did not always tell me WHO was in the photos and alas I have forgoten who some of them are 

Equipment:  Hewlett Packard Scanner HP 4470C with an XGA adapter for Slides and Photos 

Anyhow onto method for Photographs - I'll try slides and negatives later 

These methods are just concepts and I have not firmly decided every detail as yet

December 2010

Epson V700

WOW

Settings for Epson Scan

Place up to twelve slides in the 35 mm slide holder with the shiny base side facing down. Your image should appear backwards on the side that faces up, as shown by the illustration on the film holder. The top of your images should face the open end of the film holder as shown below.  - This means for Kodachrome - you can see the Kodachrome words but upside down and the other side may have the handwritten photo details

 

IPTC Fields      
Zoner Xnview Irfanview Sony PMB
Description Caption Caption Comments
Title Object Name Object Name Basically that is all
       
Keywords
(VG name tag feature)		 Keywords Keywords Shows  but could not see way to add
       

 

With the Preview pane

Click All and then the Marque Delete - an icon above the All button (Marque Delete - removes the Epson template which crops all images a bit - without the template you get the whole slide with a black border for sure. You could crop if you want or not)

Save - the button to right of Scan - you can set the panel to appear every time if you want - Save as TIF. I have a disucssion about Tif vs Jpg but that was before 2TB drives when I was on 80 gb. Tif means I can edit and save without loss. Watch you don't select Multi Tiff - some software will open the pages but a lot won't.

Even the Adobe Photoshop Elements that comes with the scanner does'nt open Multi_Tff. What a clunker of software. Just too sophisticated for its own good.

  

JPG Images for the Television and DVD

Standard DVD players can show JPG image files from a regular data CDR disk. See your DVD player's manual about showing JPG images, for the media disk types it will play, and how many JPG files it will show. The DVD player will show any size of JPG image given to it, but it can only output the standard TV signal, so it must resample too-large images to the correct size, which can play sluggishly.

Blue Ray and HD DVD players and recorders exist now, and if you have one, then 1280x720 or 1920x1080 pixel image size fits the HD screen size of course. Which seems obvious, and the rest this page is instead about standard DVD players.

Until HDTV, North American standard television screens (called NTSC for National Television System Committee) are drawn with 525 horizontal scan lines, 480 of which are visible on the screen (the remaining lines are blanked out to hide the duration of the beam retrace back to the top of the screen). It simply doesn't matter if the TV screen size is 12 inches or 60 inches, the number of picture lines is always the same.

NTSC television is analog (before HDTV), but these 480 lines are correctly matched digitally by 480 pixels vertically. More cannot help. The TV aspect ratio (shape) is 4:3, so it is matched by 480 x 4/3 = 640 pixels horizontally. This is also the origin of the computer VGA 640x480 pixel screen size.

Europe, Australia, and much of the rest of the world use PAL television systems (French SECAM is essentially the same) with a higher resolution of 625 lines, with 576 lines being visible, so the 4:3 number is 768x576 pixels for PAL systems. PAL users should always substitute their own 768x576 numbers here.

You could make your JPG images be 1280x720 pixels now, ready for a HD DVD player, but today, that will show 16:9 and operate slower. Or you could just plan to rerun the resample batch again then, to recreate the right size image when the time comes.

For standard DVD players (not HD), the "correct" image size is 640x480 pixels (disputed in the next paragraph). The idea is to make your image size fit within 640x480 pixels for the television screen. Regardless of your TV type or size, this is all the standard DVD player can do. Those are the maximum useful dimensions for standard DVD players, which must resample any larger image to this smaller size.

That is the theory, but in practice, the standard television sets intentionally show an oversize image, extending the image offscreen at the sides, called overscanning (to be sure we never see the edges). The television show creators know not to put anything important near the side edges, because it will be cut off there. The image is about 10% larger than the physical screen will show. To us, it means we can't show a full 640 pixel image width. We can only see about 90% of that width, which you may want to take into account for photos. 90% of 640 is 576 pixels. Overscan varies with TV sets, it won't be exact, you may want to experiment. To see all of the image, my own preference is to keep the image within 576x480 pixels (just my opinion). This is 6:5 aspect ratio.

If you want to show your entire uncropped image, then make it 576 pixels wide, and let the height float smaller, like 576x383 for 3:2 images - it will view with a black border at top and bottom. Or make tall images be full 480 pixels height, and let the width float smaller, like 319x480 pixels for 3:2 images, with the black border at the sides. Irfanview batch and Photoshop menu File - Automate - Fit Image offer this automated resampling decision regardless of image orientation. However the image can view considerably larger if you can crop the excessive long ends first.

If you want images to fill the full screen (without any black edges), you must crop landscapes to the 4:3 or 6:5 shape (see how here, but this cropping for full screen is optional). Then resample them to 480 pixels height (bicubic) but don't allow more than the maximum width. The image dimensions should fit within the full 640x480 or the reduced 576x480 size you choose (if NTSC, or for PAL, the full 768x576 or a reduced 691x576 pixels).

After resampling, then sharpen modestly (USM 0.8 Radius for video), and save as JPG Quality 9 (High Quality). Save this as a copy, don't ever overwrite your larger archived master file.

Many people use fancy video software like Adobe Premiere to create "movie" DVDs, with sound and motion. The television screens are still the same size, but the trend today is to use large still images, a few megapixels, to allow zooming and panning in Ken Burns style. The software will resample to output the correct size smaller screen image for each frame. That subject is "video", not scanning, and I can't help with that. Read your manuals, and maybe see www.videohelp.com.

 

 

SAVING as TIFF or JPG

There is an excellent and detailed discussion at 

http://www.ekdahl.org/archiving_photo_images.htm

This extract is valuable

But the important thing to realise is that image deterioration only occurs **when you save as a jpg**. There is no quality penalty for changing formats from jpg to tiff: and the only quality loss is when you save as a new jpg file, e.g. converting tiff to jpg.

So the advice normally given is:

1 Shoot so that your camera either saves jpg or tiff, depending on your card capacity and quality requirements.
2 When editing, save intermediate files in TIFF as there is no loss of quality

However my own opinion is that "best jpg" is indistinguishable on paper from TIFF that I always save intermediate files in that format because of the lower file size. But no doubt others disagree... :-)

Further
Excellent work flow here and discusses saving working copies as Tif
http://www.rideau-info.com/genealogy/digital/workflow.html

 

Ron's Conclusion

When Scanning it is good to save at high res and ok in JPG. TIFF might fractionally be better but I am hearing that difficult to tell JPG from TIFF. Tiff costs a lot to store - so I am now thinking I will store as Jpg but when editing will first save as Tiff and then edit the Tiff file and then re-save as Jpg at the end.  

and the summary from above site

http://www.ekdahl.org/kurs/archiving_photo_images.htm

 

SCANNING 

  1. try to sort by decades 
  2. put a range of photos onto scanner 
  3. at first I was using the scanner to crop and scan each one in turn
  4. NOW scan the whole page in one go and save as  TIF
  5. all I have read is that although TIF is large - it is best for use a master original - Jpg are the ones to use on the web but every time you adjust they lose some quality 
  6. use a Name for the TIF like 1930crop2 - crop meaning I have to edit 
  7. also Save same page as PDF and then turn over any photo with writing on the back and Save as 2nd page of PDF - PDF is good compression so in one small file I have a page to match the TIF and a page with some clues as to Who and When etc 
  8. Take the photos off scanner and put in envelop or something that enables you to get back to 1930Crop2 if ever needed
  9. You can continue with more scans until all done 
  10. Or proceed to Edit 

EDIT - Stage 1

  1. Open the TIF with an editor ACDSee Photoshop Irfanview Picasa - whatever you like
  2. now use the crop tool to grab a photo out of collection 
  3. maybe leave an area around the photo as it may not be level
  4. after the crop - use SAVE AS and rename the photo - don't overwrite the TIF with all the photos
  5. with SAVE AS keep new photo as TIF and use a name like 1937grandma_C2 -  identify who etc is in photo and C2 for Crop2 so you can get back to original 
  6. Keep this in same folder as original 
  7. Now if the photo is not level - it is hard to place level on scanner  - use the editors rotate feature to move the image
  8. This is not a 90 degree rotate - there should be a function to adjust by 1 or 2 degrees etc whatever makes it look good 
  9. Straightening a photo is very nicely handled in Picasa 
  10. now Crop to make a reasonable photograph - you always have the original master Crop to get it from again in the future
  11. now see if you want to adjust exposure etc or clean up anything
  12. Gamma is often good for this
  13. I am not discussing major photo editting 
  14. Save 

Edit Stage 2 - Caption using IPTC

  1. Now creating JPG for photo albums and web pages and videos etc 
  2. Save the Editted TIF as a JPG 
  3. I now use Zoner Photo Studio
  4. IPTC is the ability to add a caption into the details of picture - and can be read by several different pieces of software
  5. Anyhow I have found FREE software that works for me

October 2005 - I have found IPTCext at http://photothumb.com/IPTCExt/index.shtml 
This is shell - simply open properties on JPG and I can add captions - and all this is loseless to a JPG

 

LABEL on the Photo - Irfanview 

  1. If you want you can get that label into the body of the photo so the photo is tagged for all to see
  2. Select an area on the photo - mouse click and create a box
  3. Then Edit and Insert text into a box
  4. You could type your own text or the IPTC caption
  5. Click HELP in the text window and various options are availble
  6. The straight forward IPTC caption is $120 not a piice a code in Irfanview
  7. And there you have a Label
  8. And you can use Batch to overlay text from IPTC fields- note Pixvue for batch update of IPTC 

LABEL underneath photo or alongside

  1. Routine above only puts on top of photo image which kind of messes up the picture 
  2. If you want as a separate footer etc I found that I could create a NEW image with a nice back ground and then paste the photo into it - ensure new is deeper than the original - this leaves a BOX at bottom onto which with InFraview you can add the Caption as above
  3. I used ACDSee to create the box but other software should do this
  4. 3/2006 irfanview has Canvas Size and a box can easily be added - also using batch

Phew lots more to sort out

This guy http://www.rideau-info.com/genealogy/digital/captioning.html has some good ideas but uses some paid software all the above are free

 

Some Album etc possibles

http://fotosaver.com/index.htm has its own Text descriptions but not IPTC it seems - BUT this might suit you

http://jalbum.net/index.jsp

http://www.through-the-lens.net/index.php?page=1

Software tried and Removed  
Cam2pc Not bad - quite a quick browser - had EXIF support but with a warning which was strange - but I could not see IPTC
http://www.studioline.net/ Looks like it does IPTC and produces web sites BUT it costs - was a demo but fiddly getting actiavted  - but at those prices I will wait until I really know I want
Pro Show Gold and Producer  It seemed to say it would produce video using IPTC - so I downloaded the Gold version $70 demo - sadly it only had macros for EXIF - so I asked their support - quickly they came back and said only in Producer version $400 - I tried it and it did but did not wrap the text - they said I could put line breaks as wanted into IPTC caption but at $400 no thanks....

And the time line for show caption and drop it did not work - some temporary hiccup I suppose - obviously you want that if overlaying images with caption as you also need to see the image clearly

ACDSee 8 I have been using v4 for some time and thought v8 had some function usage for IPTC but no it handles it but does not provide much usage - their support were responsive and I left their "ideas" group with what I was looking for.
   

Making CDs 

Lula Bliley's Photo Album Read Me Page

Good stuff especially on Movies with Microsoft Photo Story and Movie Maker  http://www.papajohn.org/

Summary

SOFTWARE I LIKE  
Photo edit - Gamma - Colour Crop etc Zoner Photo Studio
IPTC captions  
Web Site pages 2018 I now do them manually
Overlay Label on Photo from IPTC metadata Irfanview - it wraps the text and has batch

Xnview - sadly does not wrap text but you could use line breaks within caption etc

   

 

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age