At 09:46 PM 8/8/99 -0700, Acer Victoria wrote:
>>>>640x480 pixels at 72 dpi<<<
>
>Question: I scaled some of images, scanned from a 4x6 print, to said
>resolution. I've discovered it changes the aspect ratio somewhat, and to
>me looks unnatural, vertically stretched. Just me or what?
"What," I'd venture to guess. If you do a full-frame capture, 640 x 480 is
an aspect ratio of 4:3, whereas the natural frame size of the 35mm
neg/slide has an aspect ratio of 3:2. Forcing such a capture into another
aspect ratio causes the problems. Instead, crop what *you* want in the
image and then do a "Preserve Aspect Ratio" dimensional reduction (most
picture manipulation software has this feature buried in it somewhere...).
You'll no longer have a "standard aspect ratio" image for a monitor (which
usually has the same 4:3 ratio), but so what? The display device's aspect
ratio shouldn't constrain your vision.
[By the by, the minimum I use these days is a target resolution of 800 x
600, since it's been quite a while since I've met anyone running at 640 x
480... I reduce to fit the constraining dimension (height or width), and
then stop worrying about it.]
>As for my hard/soft -ware: Epson Perfection 636U flatbed, and MS Picture
>It! or Photo Editor, neither of which I like. PhotoDeluxe isn't my cup of
>tea either, because it saves only in one format: that of photodeluxe.
>I'm looking to get JASC Paint Shop Pro instead. Anyone here used it?
Yes. For the price, it's quite a competent little program. Can't match
the power of some of the resampling algorithms in Photoshop, though. Might
want to try looking for a copy of Photoshop LE (a "light edition," if
memory serves). The resampling algorithms are particularly important when
reducing the scanned size of an image -- the bi-cubic re-sampling routine
in Paint Shop Pro just doesn't seem to be quite up to the snuff of the
implementation in Photoshop, and has left me with image artifacts that I
found quite annoying.
>In all, the computer has some imaging software by Kodak that came with
>Win98, MS Picture It! Express v2.0, MS Photo Editor, Epson PageManager,
>Adobe PhotoDeluxe HE v3.0, and PhotoRecall/EZphoto or some such other crap
>that came bundled with scanner and printer (HP895Cxi). I've used PSP at
>school, and like it. Any other alternatives (Corel Draw? How much $$$)
I wouldn't use Corel Draw -- if you really want to go the combo route
(paint/draw/photo manip), try Corel Xara 2.0. *Far* better program for the
price -- virtually all of the graphics on the Oly Gallery were done with a
combination of Xara and Photoshop. Simpler than Corel Draw, and yet
paradoxically (or maybe not?) more powerful, too. Xara can be bought on
the Web at:
http://xaraxone.i-us.com
and it's cheap ($79.95 U.S.). In my not-so-humble opinion, Xara 2.0 is one
of *the* great secrets of image/graphics creation/manipulation in the
software world today. Plus, you don't need a six bazillion TeraHertz CPU
to run the thing -- it'll putter along happily on an obsolete 486 or
Pentium, and absolutely smokes on state-of-the-art machines. ;-)
Garth
"A bad day doing photography is better
than a good day doing just about
anything else."
The Unofficial Olympus Web Photo Gallery at:
http://www.taiga.ca/~gallery/
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