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Hidden Power Monthly
February 03, Vol.1
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A Note from Richard
Demo and Free Actions tool released
Hidden Power Site Updated
Tools for the Future?
Q&A Selections
Actions News
The best put plans of mice and men...sometimes get altered for something better. I've decided to make a more formal newsletter release once a month to help try and organize materials. This is the first of these...your feedback (rl@ps6.com) is requested. I'll still be doing quick questions a few times a month as part of the Yahoogroup, but some people are looking for an alternative way to subscribe. I'll be able to handle it better this way when I figure out what that alternative will be...
I've posted a solution for playing Photoshop actions in Elements on the website. This has a demo of some of the Hidden Power tools built in. I will soon be releasing a more flexible actions palette for Hidden Power readers. You can install both without worry. Find the free tool here: http://hiddenelements.com/freetools.html
The Hidden Power site has been updated -- and hopefully I killed all the dead links. If you find any, let me know. The Q&A section is still not complete, because I may have to switch hosting services to make a database available. If anyone has suggestions, I'm open to them.
I am working on a Healing tool by popular request. I am not sure when it will be complete, exactly. However, I hope it will be soon. Please feel free to make additional suggestions.
Every month I will be choosing some feature questions for the Q&A in the newsletter. Get your questions in through the website or by sending them to the Yahoogroups list (hpe@yahoogroups.com).
<<I expected to be able to click the curves layer and tweak the curves a bit more (and perhaps to record the adjustment I made for future use).>>
Regretfully it wasn't possible to edit Curves. Well, that isn't entirely true...editing was too cumbersome to add. You can, however, easily replace a curve, or add more of them,
If there are cases where you want to re-use a curve, take a screen shot...and store the curve layer in a template image called mycurves or something. You can then just drag the Curve layer to a new image without re-setting the points. If you have ever used a layout program, this would be like using a library. It isn't a perfect solution, but it will save you time if you are constantly deploying the same curves and want to automate that.
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2. Correcting Scans?
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<<As I'm scanning the million or so old slides in my Grandpa's collection, I'm running into a lot where the flash wasn't strong enough or something. What's the best most accurate way to lighten them up? I've used both the Brightness/Contrast under the Enhance menu as well as the Backlighting/Fill Flash options with mixed results. (image attached)>>
Returning to the slides, do they LOOK like your scans? A quick measure with the Histogram tells me you have an image that has no information over about 40% of the image (that is, it is nearly completely black but for noise). Either the image is not being scanned correctly (could be the equipment or the operation...), or there really isn't enough detail here. If you can see more detail in the slide than you can see on screen, the scans are bad, not necessarily the image. Start with correcting your scanning technique, not the image.
My guess is that you are scanning the slides at home with a transparency adapter? Many people have these and use them with their scanners expecting to scan slides, but the truth is you'll never get the result you want (unless you use a dedicated slide scanner). Adapters are good for scanning large transparent items (like over-head projector transparencies) not for scanning slides...seriously, anyway.
My suggestion is: either try to do 2 scans to get more detail, or go get a professional scan. The latter may be far more INEXPENSIVE than you think. Find someplace that does Kodak PhotoCD scans. I've used these for years and you can get quality that gets close to a drum scan. In other words, you'll get the detail you have in the slide (so long as the operator of the Kodak machine knows what he/she is doing). These scans can be had for $2 depending on where you get them done. You want Kodak Photo CD scans that have 4-5 levels of resolution, not some low-resolution consumer scan that they do when processing rolls of film. You will not need Kodak PhotoCD Pro scans, which are for medium format film (and cost quite a bit more...but still not bad at 6-10$ per image). The resolution you get may be close to being the same in pixel count, but the image itself should be far sharper.
The other thing you can try with your home scanner is making two scans. Scan once to get a 'normal' scan, and then again to get all you can out of the details. This requires knowing what your scanning software is capable of and setting white and black points for the scan. In this case, you'll want to set the white point at about 50% gray, and the black at 100% black. When you make the scan, you'll get more detail from the shadow information. Then you can sandwich the scans in layers.
Hidden Power will make a lot less work of this. You could use saturation and luminosity masking techniques from the book to target changes to the dark part of the images.
<<i'm not sure if there is a way to do this but, if there is a way i would like to see a tutorial on how to create a higher resolution image from a lower resolution image without losing its image quality, in other words to take a small image and make it larger keeping it's quality.>>
You can keep image quality...but not make it better. That is, your image can be increased in size, but you won't ever add back detail that will make it seem crisp. Best you can do is sharpen, and that is a calculation. Some people report good results using fractals...I suggest it is hocus pocus. I use the example of a broach in Hidden Power...You'll never see more of the intricate detail if you don't already have it in the image. Even a fancy algorythm won't put it back in or intuit it.
The amount of information in your image is finite. You can count the pixels, and there will never be any more of them. To make more, you have to guess, to guess interpolate, to interpolate...almost necessarily to blur. There are exceptions (such as increasing the size of a screenshot), but no way you can add more detail except by taking another picture (or making a higher resolution scan).
Probably not what you want to hear, but it is the reality.
This section will be included to help share information on Actions and working with them in Elements. I hope to create a collection of Elements-tested actions, but need reader help. If you run actions successfully in Elements, and think others would like to, let me know about them! (rl@ps6.com)
<< I remember seeing one of your posts in the Adobe user forum where you indicated that Photoshop actions could be accessed - although not created - in Elements. I'm really looking forward to learning how to do that. Will those procedures be included on the web site? >>
I've just made a demo available to run Photoshop Actions in Elements. Find it here:
http://hiddenelements.com/freetools.html
There are actually a number of ways to run Photoshop actions in Elements. It got more difficult with PE2 because adobe insinuated a lot of XML stuff which was supposed to be an enhancement and actually ended up blocking a lot of authors from creating materials because they couldn't install them. I think mine is one of the very few (only?) that claims to get recipes/how-to to work. As far as I know, Adobe still has not released any instructions for how to do it.
Actions can be run in Recipes, Effects and through the Quick Start menu. I can discuss using actions through the Effects or Quick Start menu. Effects can only run actions that have a single action in the saved set. Quick Start can run just about anything, but you need to know the name of the action you want to run within a given set.
If you have a sample of something you'd like to use that DOES NOT have restrictions (e.g., copyright, or notice that the actions can be used only "as is" without alteration), you can forward them and I'll convert them to run in Elements.
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2. Will actions run without Photoshop features?
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<<This may be a dumb question. Will Actions work with Elements 2 even if Elements doesn't have a specific Photoshop feature? For example, Elements doesn't have the selective colour adjustment (via Color Range). If I have an action that calls Color Range, will it work?>>
Actually, a very good question. There are some functions that won't work because of the way actions were recorded to work in Photoshop. For example, if a menu item is different in Photoshop and Elements and the item is picked from the menu (there is usually more than one way), the action won't play correctly. But that doesn't necessarily mean it won't work.
If you try an action and it doesn't work, I'd be interested in seeing the action and adjusting it (so long as there is no copyright violation involved). The easiest thing to do is try and run it. If it runs and the results are not what you expect, then it will need adjustment. If it doesn't run at all, you have either not installed correctly, or the naming scheme for the file and action won't work with Elements (those can be changed, obviously, as well).
As for features not being available...many of them are but they don't have access via the Elements interface. Some actions may surprise you by just running without alteration, even if you think they won't. Others may require a work-around. I've found very little that can't be adjusted -- or should I say, very little that I've not been able to find some solution for.
Brought to you by Richard Lynch
in conjunction with
The Hidden power of Photoshop Elements 2
and
http://hiddenelements.com
Get it the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0782141781/newwriting/
Copyright (c) 2003 Richard Lynch