Clone tool discovered in Lightroom

There is a tiny dust particle on my CCD. Well, you may all know this, but after having used Lightroom for some time, I have discovered that there is a Clone/Heal tool which allows removing signs from dust on the CCD or the lense. This is just to let you know. Good news.

As is

I decided some time ago that I would rescan my negatives already scanned with the Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner because I realized that batch scan in the Epson 3170 simply cuts off the edges of all pictures. I was thinking of my great art that inhabits the entire picture space and how it was brutally distorted by this machine and I made the decision to rescan everything.

Besides, I have recently bought an Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner because I had the impression that my earlier Epson Perfection 3170 Photo scanner started to perform badly.

(It was pixelating photo scans, see my earlier blogpost about that.)

Now that I have been using Epson V700 for a while, I have really come to rescan some photos. I have given up the thing about the edges (in Epson V700 the plastic holder is such that it even covers the edges so finally why bother...). Rescanning these pictures was really the acte gratuit, the meaningless action, so probably I wanted to find some meaning, and this meaning I found in sharing.
Here we go, lo, a comparison of the very same slide scanned with both scanners.
Each scan is provided AS IS in 3200 dpi resolution over at my Picasa account, just click on the thumbnails and enjoy the view. But also beware, as they are above 60MB each.

These are 100 ISO Fuji slides taken with a Canon Eos 300 and scanned with 3200 dpi:
Epson 3170, 24-bit colour

Epson V700, 48-bit colour

Epson 3170, 24-bit colour

Epson V700, 48-bit colour


Any difference? Images of V700 are more vivid. The Epson 3170 is said to have something like a white veil on all pictures.
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Keleti yellow light revisited

This was the original photo taken in yellow light:


I manipulated it by decreasing the Saturation of Orange and adding some extra saturation for the Blue. (I also added some extra Contrast and Brightness)


Then B. came up and tampered with White Balance.
Interestingly enough, he picked a spot which was white (to our eyes at least) - it was a brightly reflected, burned spot on the back of the dustman in the yellow overcoat in the middle of the photo).
This made the photo even less orangy than after my manipulation. What is more, the blues also came back.
Then we started experimenting with the different colours. Extra saturation for the yellow would make the panels underground as well as the yellow trains regain original colours. This was also an effect pleasant to the eye.
We then took back from the Luminance on the blue spot of the train's neon sign. This drastically effected the Luminance of Blues (-67). This was useful for making the shining blue surfaces, lit by neon lights, come back to reality, and become less bright (less overexposed) and more contrasted (which also means sharper).
Finally, the saturation of this spot was pushed up a tiny little bit.

Here is the result:


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All the photo communities of the web

It seems to me that I am trying them all:

Picasa
http://picasaweb.google.hu/perfectyello - Where I normally upload photos related to this blog.
http://picasaweb.google.hu/perfectyello.xxl - Where I upload oversized pictures (for testing objectives) that I would like to share with the photo community.

Panoramio
http://www.panoramio.com/user/554888

IndaPhoto
http://indafoto.hu/perfectyello

Flickr
I have several accounts on Flickr.

And last but not least, the Dreamstime Stock Photography site:
http://www.dreamstime.com/perfectyello_info

Yellow light from light bulbs at Keleti

It turns out that yellow light is actually orange. Saturation of orange was decreased to around minus 80 on these photos taken at Keleti train station in the evening.

Some extra saturation was added for the red...

...for the blue:

...for the green:

These pictures are almost black and white... or sepia.
Actually, it is hard to tell whether this is more natural. After all, light was awfully orange-yellow at Keleti.

And finally, imagine there was more light in Keleti at this night, let the white stones shine white...

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Is it or is it not a problem?

Is it or is it not a problem when somebody enters your photo at the bottom right corner? I definitely cannot decide. It might as well be interpreted as dynamism.

Un-sharp is clever

Normally, I like sharpness in my pictures. The Carl Zeiss Jena Flectagon 20mm f4 I was testing with my M42 adapter on the Pentax K10D turned out to be particularly unsharp - to an extent unimaginable.
Closer pictures are however sharper.
That is how the idea of this double world with the blurred underworld of humans and the sharpness of abstract signs above it occurred to me. Also, this seems to be a picture that works much better in black and white.



I have seen something very similar by Zoltán Vancsó, where things you would normally not compose in one picture fit quite well together. Like in this picture, for example

It may well be that technical perfection is a subjective term, a good picture always depends on what you make of your tools. (How clever, uhh.)