A Better way to Crop

[onbelaydave]

A lot of people liked the "extreme" macros I posted. Truth is they were shot with a Nikon N90s, w/a 105 macro (1:1 and one of their sharpest lenses) on Fuji Provia, the finest grained color film possible, in a flat port,w/a 33% mag. factor, yielding a better than life size image on the slide. But I read several years ago that the "Genuine Fractals" plug-in for PS to up rez your photos was INFERIOR to the built in bi-cubic interpolator in PS. Given that all of these images were at least 1:1 macro originally,and the sharpest of 8-10 shots scanned at 4000 dpi (54 mb native resolution) were picked for my "test". I rescaled my original 53 mb 4000dpi 5360x3530 pixel scans to double or triple their native resolutions AND THEN CROPPED down. My crops; although interpolated, avoided the overly pixelated look of a standard crop as my cropped image size was still the same or better than the original. Not to get into the film vs digital debate, I think film still has a "slight' edge for this extreme resolution testing. Try this the next time you need to crop something. It seems to work for my set up.

 

[Dee]

What about the graininess/noise, especially in the tunicates?

 

[ssra30]

I might be wrong but I think some of that looked like artifacts from sharpening process rather than pixelation from cropping/enlarging. Just a thought....

 

[Dee]

You think so? This one is what I'm talking about. I'm seeing it over the whole picture but it just looks like graininess (since it's film) to me.

 

[UWSojourner]

... they were shot with a Nikon N90s, w/a 105 macro (1:1) on Provia in a flat port,w/a 33% mag. factor "Genuine Fractals" plug-in for PS to up rez your photos was INFERIOR to the built in bi-cubic interpolator in PS 1:1 macro originally, scanned at 4000 dpi (54 mb native resolution) my original 53 mb 4000dpi 5360x3530 pixel scans overly pixelated ... It seems to work for my set up.

uhhhh ... Mine too? :embarass:

 

[ssra30]

You think so? This one is what I'm talking about. I'm seeing it over the whole picture but it just looks like graininess (since it's film) to me.

Yes, I think so, especially the background. I don't think film would show this much grain but it has been a long time since I shot film. Also I have no idea how much the picture was cropped so parts of it might just be artifact from cropping.

 

[Dee]

You could be right, he doesn't mention how much was cropped. The background is what I was looking at. Maybe he'll show up and tell us.

 

[mandrake]

You could be right, he doesn't mention how much was cropped. The background is what I was looking at. Maybe he'll show up and tell us.

Are you viewing on a laptop? I notice the grain on a desktop, but it's not really obvious -- you have to look for it. In the past I've noticed such things to be much more obtrusive on a laptop (not sure why). I think LCD screens accentuate it.

 

[Texass]

I was about to start another post to find out why all my cropped shots look like crap. All past experience aside, I just KNEW it couldn't be me. lol

 

[Scubatooth]

just to clairfy something thats needs to be in the cropping and resizing are to totally different things, and that to upsize a picture using genuine fractals is far better then photoshops bicubic interpolation in every respect(i will have to dig up the article on the subject)

also another thing to consider is that scanning in a slide at 4000 dpi is gonna make the image look horrid at a 100%(you need to back it up to about 25% and re look at it) and that the resoultion of a print is around 300 dpi when your desktop monitor is only 72 dpi so there is going to be a drastic difference in appearance

Here is a comparion of print/scan qualities
text document and screen resoultion is 72 dpi
average photo quality print is 3-500 dpi
average nikon cool scan scanner (film) 4000 dpi (thats almost a 56x enlargment over your screens native dpi)

hope this helps

tooth