anyone use 3rd party plugins for photoshop or PSP?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

I'm pretty pleased overall with the results my new Epson R300 gives me,
some of the 8X10's are absolutely flawless and difficult, in some cases
almost impossible to tell from a lab print. However, some still have the
tiniest to not so tiny indication of dots when looking at them *really*
close. I always use best quality when printing, and usually use the
bundled Epson software to print with. These prints are mostly from
negative scans done with my Nikon LS-2000 and printed in their native
tiff format. I usually scan with digital ice enabled, and seldom do any
retouching except for slight lightenng adjustments if needed.

I have heard of some plugins for PSP/Photoshop that will eliminate noise
& graininess from photo's, but I have not even yet begun to use even a
fraction of the features these programs have and am reluctant to add
more at this time.

Am I wasting my time and is this just a limitation of the printer?

Is printing from tiff rather than jpegs generally a better practice?

As you can see I am relatively inexperienced at this & all advice and
suggestions are welcome!

TIA

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Glen S wrote:
> I'm pretty pleased overall with the results my new Epson R300 gives me,
> some of the 8X10's are absolutely flawless and difficult, in some cases
> almost impossible to tell from a lab print. However, some still have the
> tiniest to not so tiny indication of dots when looking at them *really*
> close. I always use best quality when printing, and usually use the
> bundled Epson software to print with. These prints are mostly from
> negative scans done with my Nikon LS-2000 and printed in their native
> tiff format. I usually scan with digital ice enabled, and seldom do any
> retouching except for slight lightenng adjustments if needed.
>
> I have heard of some plugins for PSP/Photoshop that will eliminate noise
> & graininess from photo's, but I have not even yet begun to use even a
> fraction of the features these programs have and am reluctant to add
> more at this time.
>
> Am I wasting my time and is this just a limitation of the printer?
>
> Is printing from tiff rather than jpegs generally a better practice?
>
> As you can see I am relatively inexperienced at this & all advice and
> suggestions are welcome!
>
Two noise reduction plugins I have are: Noise Ninja and Neat Image. Both
work well in reducing noise introduced by the sensor in low light/high
ISO images.

If you have a jpeg, you gain nothing by converting it to a TIFF and
printing. OTOH, *editing* in jpeg will lose some tiny amount of detail
in the process of recompressing.

--
John McWilliams

I know that you believe you understood what you think I said, but I'm
not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

John McWilliams wrote:
> Glen S wrote:
>
>> I'm pretty pleased overall with the results my new Epson R300 gives
>> me, some of the 8X10's are absolutely flawless and difficult, in some
>> cases almost impossible to tell from a lab print. However, some still
>> have the tiniest to not so tiny indication of dots when looking at
>> them *really* close. I always use best quality when printing, and
>> usually use the bundled Epson software to print with. These prints are
>> mostly from negative scans done with my Nikon LS-2000 and printed in
>> their native tiff format. I usually scan with digital ice enabled, and
>> seldom do any retouching except for slight lightenng adjustments if
>> needed.
>>
>> I have heard of some plugins for PSP/Photoshop that will eliminate
>> noise & graininess from photo's, but I have not even yet begun to use
>> even a fraction of the features these programs have and am reluctant
>> to add more at this time.
>>
>> Am I wasting my time and is this just a limitation of the printer?
>>
>> Is printing from tiff rather than jpegs generally a better practice?
>>
>> As you can see I am relatively inexperienced at this & all advice and
>> suggestions are welcome!
>>
> Two noise reduction plugins I have are: Noise Ninja and Neat Image. Both
> work well in reducing noise introduced by the sensor in low light/high
> ISO images.
>
> If you have a jpeg, you gain nothing by converting it to a TIFF and
> printing. OTOH, *editing* in jpeg will lose some tiny amount of detail
> in the process of recompressing.
>

But I don't start out with a jpeg, both my film(Ls-2000) and flatbed
(HP4C) scanners save to tiff files, and for the sake of disk space I was
considering converting them to jpeg's. However since I just bought a
dual layer dvd burner that may not be as big an issue now..

I was just curious though, if tiff files have generally better printed
results than a jpeg of the same pic, perhaps I'll try one tonight and
see for myself.

The plugins you have sound like they are worth a look at, are they for
PSP or photoshop?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Glen S wrote:
> John McWilliams wrote:
>
>> Glen S wrote:
>>
>>> I'm pretty pleased overall with the results my new Epson R300 gives
>>> me, some of the 8X10's are absolutely flawless and difficult, in some
>>> cases almost impossible to tell from a lab print. However, some still
>>> have the tiniest to not so tiny indication of dots when looking at
>>> them *really* close. I always use best quality when printing, and
>>> usually use the bundled Epson software to print with. These prints
>>> are mostly from negative scans done with my Nikon LS-2000 and printed
>>> in their native tiff format. I usually scan with digital ice enabled,
>>> and seldom do any retouching except for slight lightenng adjustments
>>> if needed.
>>>
>>> I have heard of some plugins for PSP/Photoshop that will eliminate
>>> noise & graininess from photo's, but I have not even yet begun to use
>>> even a fraction of the features these programs have and am reluctant
>>> to add more at this time.
>>>
>>> Am I wasting my time and is this just a limitation of the printer?
>>>
>>> Is printing from tiff rather than jpegs generally a better practice?
>>>
>>> As you can see I am relatively inexperienced at this & all advice and
>>> suggestions are welcome!
>>>
>> Two noise reduction plugins I have are: Noise Ninja and Neat Image.
>> Both work well in reducing noise introduced by the sensor in low
>> light/high ISO images.
>>
>> If you have a jpeg, you gain nothing by converting it to a TIFF and
>> printing. OTOH, *editing* in jpeg will lose some tiny amount of detail
>> in the process of recompressing.
>>
>
> But I don't start out with a jpeg, both my film(Ls-2000) and flatbed
> (HP4C) scanners save to tiff files, and for the sake of disk space I was
> considering converting them to jpeg's. However since I just bought a
> dual layer dvd burner that may not be as big an issue now..
>
> I was just curious though, if tiff files have generally better printed
> results than a jpeg of the same pic, perhaps I'll try one tonight and
> see for myself.
>
> The plugins you have sound like they are worth a look at, are they for
> PSP or photoshop?

I have them in PS CS, don't know if they are compatible with PSP.

It'd be an oddity if the same image, opened and saved as a JPEG, and
then also opened and saved as a TIFF printed differently, all other
things being equal.

There's a degradation of image each time you edit and resave as a JPEG,
but some tests have shown that it's imperceptible even after dozens of
such resaves. YMMV, IIRC, etc. but the lossy part of JPEGs is frequently
overplayed.

--
John McWilliams

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

You are really not tapping the potential of your hardware and software.
I do not see where you say what dpi/image file size you are obtaining with
your film scans.
You may not be scanning at high enough resolution.
Pixelation or graininess can also occur if you are oversharpening: the
printer driver applies a certain amount of sharpening depending on settings.
If the dots you are talking about are in large areas of light color, like
blue sky, this may be film grain. Global noise reducing plug ins are
generally overkill as you can easily correct regions of the image more
subtly using layers in PSP or PS.
If you want to move to the next level in printing rudimentary color
management may be all you need.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

bmoag wrote:
> You are really not tapping the potential of your hardware and software.
> I do not see where you say what dpi/image file size you are obtaining with
> your film scans.
> You may not be scanning at high enough resolution.
> Pixelation or graininess can also occur if you are oversharpening: the
> printer driver applies a certain amount of sharpening depending on settings.
> If the dots you are talking about are in large areas of light color, like
> blue sky, this may be film grain. Global noise reducing plug ins are
> generally overkill as you can easily correct regions of the image more
> subtly using layers in PSP or PS.
> If you want to move to the next level in printing rudimentary color
> management may be all you need.
>
>
I'm not sure what resolution I am scanning at with the film scanner,
likely whatever the default is as I more or less just hooked it up,
installed the software and started scanning. The images are about 8 meg
tiff files when scanned and my negatives for the most part are ASA200 &
100, with the odd 400.

I am fairly new at this so I havent had a lot of time to spend playing
with it yet. I do need to spend some more time with the image programs
and using layers etc.. to make enhancements/corrections. I also found
vuescan's software nicer to use than Nikons for the film scanner, with
the added "nice to have" of being able to scan from either scanner from
the same program. The only trouble is, I have the free linux version and
it won't write to my ntfs partitions so I can go back in to windows and
work in PSP or PS, both of which I am just learning and learning to use
GIMP at the same time may just overload my tired old brain! I guess I
could create a small fat partition for photos or get a memory stick
tho...(or shell out the $$ for the windows version of vuescan)

Are there any good online intermediate to semi advanced tutorials on any
of these editing prog's?

tia