On 4/27/2014 6:21 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
On 4/26/2014 9:32 PM, Moose wrote:
I can make each one the crop I want, and in batch downsizing/print
sharpening in FastStone, the rest of the page is filled with black. I'm
not stuck with any particular proportions.
I'm surprised that you do sharpening in FastStone. I'd have thought you demanded something more sophisticated...
whatever that might be.
I like to think (hope?) that I'm not too much of a gear and software snob. I like what works. For example, I use PS
instead of LR or the others I've tried because I can do things in PS I couldn't do in anything else.
I recently tried demos of a couple of other NR plug-ins, each claiming to be 'best', before buying the 64 bit version of
NeatImage. Just tried a couple of the magic masking tools. On my kind of image, they didn't do as good a job as I can
already do in PS with its Refine Edge settings - so no sale.
FastStone seems to me to be a sort of hodge-podge, underneath. He's using someone else's RAW conversion engine, likely
DCRaw. I don't know where the image editing tools come from, or if they are written in-house, but they are rather
rudimentary and unsubtle.
I also don't know where the resizing stuff comes from, but it works quite well for these books. I found out through time
crunch necessity. When I decided to do the first book, on some time limited super special price, I ended up with 101
images of various pixel sizes that needed to be put in the book software.
I soon found out, to my chagrin, that their software was a nightmare for portrait orientated images (May be better now,
I don't know.) It was horribly hard to get them to just fit the height of the page. So I decided, after using up a lot
of time, to make each image into a landscape form exactly to their page pixel size, filling in any blank space around
the image itself with black.
This would have taken forever, image by image, by hand. Even with PS batch process, it was a lot of time. So I tried
NeatImage. I can batch all landscapes with one setting and all portraits with a second, complete with downsampling of
image and fixed canvas size with selectable fill color. There is a whole preview function, which I may have used the
first time?
The results looked pretty decent, my eyes and brain were tired, so I took a chance. The images in the book came out
great! So I did the same thing for the next one - came out looking great, and now for this one.
How good it is in general, I don't know. With the Lanczos3 (default out of 11 algorithms) and non USM sharpen of 3,
whatever that is, I get what I want, count myself lucky to have found it first shot, and don't plan to mess with a good
thing. :-) It's not the same as preparing for the web.
If he had just the resizing tool as a PS plug-in, I'd try it.
BreezeBrowser does that stuff if you ask it to make "proofs". I've assumed that Bridge and Lightroom probably do the
same but haven't checked it out since I haven't come to love Bridge yet and have never even tried Lightroom (despite
owning the last 3 or 4 versions). Lightroom always stops me cold when it tells me it wants to make a catalog.
I ain't ascared of that; I just don't like using it. If you do almost all your work in ACR, you should like using it, I
suppose.
In any case, one advantage of this kind of book making is that I make
one, and can see if there are changes needed for the next 'printing',
where I get more than one more. So I would be interested in knowing
which ones 'push up against each other'. Where I realize you've seen
something I didn't see, eyes bleary and mind weary with finishing up
processing, downsizing and organizing 80 images, I can make adjustments.
Almost all of the images on adjacent pages "push up against each other" in the on-line preview. The notable
exceptions are where portrait and landscape orientations face each other on adjacent pages. There's no page number
reporting so I haven't kept track of them. The very first instance is images 3 and 4 following the bridge with
reflection. But now I'm curious about why you asked since you've said the actual book won't look like that.
Curious; if it was just a few, I'd look at 'em myself.
The first version of my first book was conventional binding; no other option at the time. I did end up moving just a
couple of images because of the effect of the image edge disappearing down into the binding. I was amazed to find how
much difference not only choice of facing images, but which sides they are on makes.
Now I'll just wait for the physical book to see what's what. Slow freight from
NY means Friday, sigh.
Pixel Reduced Moose
--
What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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