I got started with digital photography in January 1999, with the purchase of a Hewlett-Packard Photosmart scanner, a SCSI card, Windows 95*, and Jasc Paint Shop Pro 5 image editing software. This Web site first “went live” on 18 April 1999, with 97 pictures. Over nine years that collection has grown to 948 pictures (as of 18 April 2008). Although those first efforts at turning my negatives and slides into digital images seemed good at the time, I have gradually been replacing them with better versions as I’ve upgraded my hardware, software, and skills.
In the much-reduced JPEG images on this Web site, the differences between the original and improved versions are often fairly subtle, even when the improvement is dramatic when viewed at full resolution or printed. But with some of them, the difference is visible and instructive. Here are side-by-side comparisons and discussion of four pictures I’ve recently updated.
Note: The new versions of all these pictures are 10% larger than the old ones. The standard size for “large” pictures on this Web site is 240x360 or 240x305, depending on cropping. From the outset I have made a few of the pictures slightly larger than that when I felt it was necessary. It’s mostly a coincidence that all four of the new images here are the larger size. The new versions are also noticeably sharper, as over the years I have learned much about sharpening images correctly for Web viewing.
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Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park, 1991. Fujichrome RD100 slide.
The version on the left was among the first pictures I prepared for this Web site in 1999. The computer I had then (which I built myself with a 200MHz Cyrix 6x86 processor) was unacceptably slow when I tried to work with full-size 2400dpi scans from the Photosmart in Paint Shop Pro 5. So I used the “8x12 print” setting in the scanner’s native software, which yielded a 1800x1200 scan. The finished image looked fine to me at the time, and this reduced version remained on the Web site for eight years. The new version on the right has somewhat more color saturation (vividness) than the original slide, while the old version has somewhat less saturation than the slide. |
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Minerva Terrace in Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, 1991. Fujichrome RD100 slide.
Another one of those first images from 1999. Although I had always liked the marshmallow whiteness of the old version, I selectively increased the saturation to reveal the pink hues that previously were just a darker shade of white. The additional color and texture enhances the other-worldly feeling of this travertine formation. The new colors necessitated a change of title: White Travertine became Minerva Terrace. “Reality”— at least as reflected in the original slide— is somewhere between these two digital renditions. |
Although the Photosmart was a breakthrough in affordable film scanners, Hewlett-Packard’s software for it was notoriously limited. With a kindergarten-cartoony user interface, it was designed (by marketeers?) to make scanning negatives, slides, and small prints as simple as possible for complete newbies. But its lack of usable controls, fixed sharpening of all scans, and use of only 8 bits of the 10-bit hardware effectively crippled an otherwise decent scanner. In response, Ed Hamrick painstakingly reverse-engineered the Photosmart to produce VueSmart, an advanced replacement for Hewlett-Packard’s scanner software. It took full advantage of the scanner to produce much better images. He soon expanded VueSmart to support other scanners and renamed it VueScan.
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The cemetery at La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, California, 2001. Supra 400 negative.
At the end of 1999 I built a new computer with a rare 450MHz AMD K6-III processor, upgraded the dodgy Windows 95 to the much improved Windows 98, and replaced my 17-inch Sony monitor with a 19-inch Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u. I had long abandoned the Photosmart software in favor of VueScan. The new computer could easily handle full-sized 2400 dpi scans. VueScan at that time produced rather low saturation in scans from negative film, requiring me to crank up the saturation slider in Paint Shop Pro. That probably contributed to constricted colors, especially greens, in many images I scanned in 2000 and 2001. Some of those pictures (including this one) remind me of Kodak’s old Ektachrome 200, a slide film notorious for combining dull color with high contrast. I used a good bit of that film in the 1980s, for its convenient speed rather than its color. But like the two Yellowstone pictures, this one looked fine at the time. Hamrick has continually improved VueScan, so I can now rely on it to produce beautifully saturated color from negatives and slides. |
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Patricia Lake in Jasper, Alberta, 1992. Fujichrome RD100 slide.
I sometimes update perfectly fine pictures to reflect my changing taste and notions of what they should look like. The version on the left is a faithful reproduction of the original slide, including the magenta cast RD100 tended to give neutral shadow tones such as the wooden steps in the foreground. It was on this Web site for over seven years, and I liked it enough to hang a print of it on my wall. I think the new version renders the scene better than the slide did. It shows the warm morning light with saturation and warmth reminiscent of Fuji Velvia, a film favored by many landscape photographers for of its extremely vivid color. Many of those pretty landscapes you’ve seen on calendars over the last decade and a half were originally Velvia transparencies. If the 2007 version isn’t a more accurate depiction of the scene, it’s surely a more compelling impression of it. I never actually used Velvia because I considered its slow speed too cumbersome. But I find its drippingly saturated “palette” very appealing. With digital processing I can get that palette even with the ISO 400 negative film I prefer for travel, or with the digital camera that replaced it. |
I replaced the Photosmart scanner with a Canon FS4000US (now discontinued) in 2003. Its higher resolution and bit depth, along with 16-bit processing in Photoshop, contributed to the improved color, contrast, and detail of the newer versions. A properly calibrated monitor ensures better and more consistent color even for Web images viewed on diverse uncalibrated monitors. Using Photoshop’s iconic Curves tool makes a difference too, providing precise control over specific tones in an image. Paint Shop Pro also had Curves even in version 5, but I didn’t know how to use it.
Also very helpful are plug-ins like PictoColor’s iCorrect EditLab Pro; that makes getting an accurate neutral color balance very simple and also allows selective adjustment of individual colors, a key to keeping enhanced saturation from jumping off a cliff. Local contrast enhancement is an amazingly useful “secret sauce” that can provide the punchy appearance of higher contrast and tactility while retaining color and detail. My version of that recipe builds on what Michael Reichmann describes in the linked article by using layers and masking to optimize the effect for each image. The enhancement effect that so enlivens a landscape ruins the perfect cloud-strewn blue sky above it by destroying the fluffiness of the clouds.
Perhaps the most important thing to note is the value of retaining original negatives or slides (or their digital equivalent, the camera raw file). When improved hardware, software, or techniques become available— or even if you have a new or different concept of what an image should look like— it’s easy to “upgrade” an image. Just make a new scan of the film, or process the raw file through the latest converter.
*My preferred operating system from 1996 through 2000 was IBM’s now-discontinued OS/2 Warp. The Photosmart scanner forced me to install Windows 95 because no usable scanning or photo editing software existed for OS/2. I had a dual-boot configuration, and ran Windows 95 only for scanning and photo editing. Although my computer was rock-stable with OS/2, it continually locked up and crashed under Windows 95. I got into the habit of saving my work after every editing click in Paint Shop Pro, to minimize the lost work and frustration when the system inevitably froze solid and needed a hard reset. Digital imaging became much more enjoyable after I switched to Windows 98, which froze and crashed far less often.
If your recollection of ancient history is a bit faded, OS/2 was originally a collaborative effort between Microsoft and IBM in the late 1980s. It was to replace MS-DOS, and bring multitasking and a Macintosh-like graphical user interface (GUI) to the PC. By the early 1990s IBM and Microsoft had parted ways. IBM was left to develop and market OS/2 on their own, while Microsoft put their formidable development and marketing teams to work on what was originally a stopgap GUI product called Windows.
OS/2 was technologically superior to the DOS-based
versions of Windows available at the time. In addition to running 32-bit
GUI software written for it, OS/2 ran DOS applications better than DOS
and 16-bit Windows programs far more reliably than Windows.
Unfortunately, IBM’s decades of experience selling multi-million dollar
mainframe computers to corporate executives did not prepare them for
selling a mass-market operating system to ordinary people. While
Microsoft kept delaying the release of their (partially) “32-bit”
Windows 95, OS/2 Warp was a genuine 32-bit operating system already on
store shelves. But instead of properly exploiting that golden
opportunity, IBM’s marketeers fumbled stumbled mumbled and bumbled OS/2
into oblivion while Microsoft monopolized the world with Windows.
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