ScanCanada / DigitalCalgary Blog

A lot of customers ask me, “can you guys make a slide show with captions and music?”.  I say NO.  But! Here’s a real easy way to do so:

Well, it’s easy if you have Vista and Windows Movie Maker.  That’s what I use.  If you don’t have this, then I recommend Adobe Elements.  It’s about 100$, and it’s a great tool.  And, I’m sure there’s a lot of freeware out there too, but 1. the good ones are hard to find, and 2. the good ones are only free for the first x days.

Anyway, go ahead, open Windows Movie Maker:

Do you have your images organized?  Good.  Next you’ll need to import those images into Movie Maker.  What I do is open the Folder the photos are in, then just drag them into the blank area in Movie Maker:

Now you have imported your images into Movie Maker, and what you want to do is drop them into the Timeline.  So, click on the first image, then select all (Ctrl+A or “Edit -> Select All).  Now just drag them down into the Timeline, specifically into “Video” area:

If you don’t like the order, simply click and hold a particular image in the Video timeline, and drag it to the position you want.

What about music?  Same thing:  open your Folder that holds your music file, and drop it in the same place you put your photos:

And, again, you need to take your music file and then drop it in the Audio/Music timeline.  This is what your timeline should look like now:

Alright, my slideshow is only 50 seconds long, but the music goes on for another 5mins.  Here’s what to do.  Scroll all the way to the end of your song:

See that arrow pointing left?  Click and drag to trim the music clip:

Beauty.  I have the music stop where the images stop.  But now there’s a problem.  The music stops abruptly.  To fix this, here’s what you can do.  Right click on the song (in the Audio/Music timeline) and choose Fade Out option:

Great.  Next, lets fancy it up a bit.  Lets add some transition effects.  On top left hand side of Movie Maker you’ll see a bunch of tasks, click on Edit / Transitions or Edit / Effects:

Play around, and see which ones you like.  Once you picked the Effects and Transitions you like, you now need to drop them into your timeline.  But, make sure to drag and drop in between each image:

Yeah, you have to drag and drop your Effect and Transition to each image.  I looked around everywhere, and I couldn’t find a faster way to do this.  Anyway, here’s what your timeline should be looking like:

So, you have Effect and Transition dragged and dropped into your Video timeline.  Oh, make sure to click the “+” link right next to Video to see more.

Now, time for captions.  In the same are where you found Effects and Transitions, you’ll see Titles and credits.  Click the link and open those options:

So, to add a caption on to a particular image, chose what image you want that caption to go on, and then click, Title on the selected clip (see above).  And go ahead and enter your caption:

And go ahead, Add title.  Also, you can see “Change the text font and color” if you like to make any changes to that.

Play the slide show, and if its what you want all you need to do is Publish it.  Again, on your left side in the Tasks, you’ll see, Publish to.  To make a DVD, go ahead and click the DVD link:

…and to burn it onto DVD, just follow the direction they give you.

And, the final masterpiece:

Movie_0001

That’s it.  Any questions just email me, info@scancanada.ca.

K.

Yeah, why is it  when you, say, setup your digital camera or save a JPEG in Photoshop or wherever, it asks you what quality level you want.  And probably like me, you choose the highest.  But then I did some intense research and compared the compression levels.  Here’s what I got:

Here’s a pic from my digital camera:

This pic was saved at level 12 (the highest) in Photoshop… lets zoom in and see:

Alright, you get the point — more compression / lower level, the worse the image gets.  But what’s not so obvious is the diff between 12 quality level and 10.  Try it yourself, you can’t tell the difference with the naked eye.  If you want to save some space on your memory card or harddrive then you don’t necessarily need to save it at the highest level.

So, then why do they — whoever sets the levels — offer this?  Here’s what I think.  I get a few old school photographer clients and they always worry about the file size.  “How much to scan a photo so it’s 100MB?”, “Why is it only 3MB, that’s a small file size isn’t it?”… and more like that.  Finally what I understood was, the more digital info you have the more bytes you have to play around with when you’re editing.  Except if you’re serious about editing your photos, then use a TIFF or RAW file.  They are uncompressed.  They are 16 bit, unlike JPEGs at 8.  And they can be as big as 300MB in file size.  If you’re gonna go all the way, may as well use TIFFs or RAW files.  JPEGs were made for low file size without compromising quality.  The difference between 12 and 10 has nothing to do with quality… quality is the same.  All that level 12 quality is doing is keeping more info you don’t need just to bloat the file.  It’s not giving you any more detail.

Of course, I’m not telling you to keep the level at 10 or at 3MB.  I’m just letting you know that a 3MB JPEG file is just fine.  It’s your choice if you want a 12MB.

K.

Resolution is tricky, it’s complicated, it makes no sense.  I’ll clear that up for you here.

Long, long time ago, when you use to go get your photos developed at a print shop nobody ever talked about resolution.  But, have you heard of DPI / dpi / dots per inch?  That’s where DPI came from– you get your photos developed and they came out 4″x6″ with a DPI of 300.

Are you asking the same question I am? Probably.  Why 300-DPI, why not 1200? Here’s why:

The image above is 4″x6″, 300-dpi scan of a negative.  Below, well, I scanned it at 4″x6″, but instead of 300, it’s 2400.  Here’s a 500×500 crop section of the scan (the actual size can fit a billboard):

If you look closely at the original, this is a close up of the cuation sign.  Anyway, so I increased the dpi to 1200 and do you see that it picked up any detail? No.  Did it make the image look any crisper? Sharper?  No.

The reason print shops stop at 300-dpi is because after 300-dpi you start picking up surface debris, dust, scratches, finger print stains… you’re no longer picking up any more detail of the image anymore.

So instead of worrying about DPI or PPI (pixels per inch), focus on the OUTPUT size.  Keep the DPI at 300, you’ll be safe there.  If you want a larger image, than change the output size, i.e. 4″x6″ or 8″x12″ or whatever you want.

You’re probably thinking, “But who cares.  I’ll never re-print these.  That’s the whole point of scanning them.  Why worry about what a print shop does?”  Ah, but what if you want to display your scans on your 52″, 1080p Plasma?  This is where understanding all this comes in.  Here, let’s find out what resolution you need to scan at to display your photos at hi-res.  Let’s take your HDTV, here’s its dimensions:

Your HDTV (no matter if it’s 32″ or 52″, plasma, whatever) is 1080 x 1980 pixels (that’s where they get the 1080 from).  Now, lets look at the dimensions of your 4″x6″, 300-dpi photo:

What’s the dimensions of your 4×6 scan?  How do you get that?  I just know you’re asking these important questions.
Well, we know your photo is 4″ x 6″ at 300 dot per inch.  Now, with some magic* how you get the height and width dimension is pretty simple:

Multiply 4″ by 300 to get height: 4 x 300 = 1200 pixels
Multiply 6″ by 300 to get the width:  6 x 300 = 1800 pixels

And, bang… 1200 x 1800 is your photo’s dimension.  Now compare that with your HDTV:

See that? Your 4×6 scan is equal if not larger than your HDTV.  That’s how you can get a small 4″x6″ photo scan look really good on a HDTV.  I know, my brain can’t wrap around it either– that a 4×6 photo scan can have the same resolution as a 52″ HDTV.  But it does.

So, what do you learn?

• That DPI isn’t that important when it comes to quality, it only makes the image larger.
• You don’t need a lot of DPI.  What you need is to make sure your output size is 4″x6″, or higher.
• That a simple 4″x6″ scan at 300-dpi is equal to HDTV quality.

Oh, something else to consider.  Have you ever wondered what the DPI is on a billboard?  Well, it’s 72-dpi.  But! the output size is 12 feet x 24 feet.  It’s the output size that counts.

Great.  Hope that clears some stuff up with resolution.

K.

*math

Good ol’ Nikon CoolScan 5000 ED Film Scanner.  If you have one of these, here’s some tips for you.  I have a small biz doing scans, and I’ve done over 100,000 scans on these guys, and they haven’t let me down.  Too bad they don’t make them anymore.  Anyway, let’s get to it.

So, I assume you have the machine plugged in and the software installed, ready to go.  First step, which way do I put in the slide?  That was my first question too.

There’s two sides to a slide:

1) Matte Emulsion Side.  This side is the side the printer actually printed something on the surface.  So you’ll see it’s less brighter, has a few beveled ridges/lines, and is usually curved in.

2) Reflective Side.  This side is more shiny, takes in more light, has a smoother surface, and it usually “bubbles” out.

The winner? Always have the shiny side DOWN.  I just say, shiny down.  This way you won’t be scanning your slides backwards.

So, shiny down, throw your slide in your machine.  Next, see a green button on the left — Preview?  Click that:

Now that you have the image in the preview panel, its time to adjust the resolution.  Lets move over to the right to the Tool Palette:

Ok, what I’m doing here is, the factory settings has the resolution at 4000-ppi / dpi to scan at the original size of the slide (1.45″ x 0.99″).  What I did was set the Output Size to 4″ x 6″ and resolution to 300 ppi / dpi.  Why?  If you walk into a print shop with a scan resolution of 4000 dpi they’re going to tell to to scale it to 300-dpi and change the output size to 4×6.  It’s just the print shop industry standard to print at 300-dpi, because any thing higher than that you’re no longer scanning image detail but the surface of the scan (minute dust/scratches and other surface artifacts you don’t want).  Of course if you want a 8×12 image, then change it to that.  Just keep the resolution to 300.

Quick Tip: when you change the res and output size, the marquee tool (the hash marks around your preview screen) will have to be stretched out again to fit the screen.

Next, scroll down the Tool Palette until you get to Digital ICE:

Enable the following:  Digital ICE, Post Processing (ROC, GEM), Digital DEE, and Scan Image Enhancer.

That’s the beauty of the Nikon, it does all the heavy lifting.  Of course you can tweak a lot more, but to get excellent scans, that is all you need to do.  Here’s what all that stuff does:

Digital ICE:  removes surface defects like dust and scratches without altering the underlying composition of the image.

DEE: reveals details lost in shadows and highlights.

Digital ROC:  restores colours lost through fading of the original film.

Digital GEM: reduces the effects of film grain.

Scan Image Enhancer: doesn’t do too much, but say you have a dark image, and you up the DEE (or exposure levels), the shadow areas will turn brown or look grainy.  Image Enhancer just makes sure too keep the dark areas dark (like shadows) while you’re making it brighter.

To see this in action, here’s more info:
http://scancanada.ca/digital_ice.html

Hope this helps.  If you have any questions you can always email me, Konrad at info@scancanada.ca

K.

–
ScanCanada.ca and DigitalCalgary.com are Canada’s leaders in converting 35mm slides and negative film to digital images, converting any size photos to digital images, scanning your documents, all onto DVD or CD. Offices located in Toronto, but serving Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Mississauga, London, Montreal, Halifax, and everywhere in between. NOT© 2010 ScanCanada.ca.  Take what you like.

Let me ask you this:  Would you buy a $800, 1080p HDTV if they said it’s a whopping 2 mega pixels?  Probably not.  But the funny thing is, yes, your HDTV is only 2 mega pixels.  Why?  We’ll get to that.

So I’m walking around my electronic stores, looking at all the damn choices they have.  I just want something that will display a crisp, high-res video.  But then they throw in 60mhz, plasma, 720, 1080, 52″…. I think they do it on purpose.  When you’re so confused, your reptilian brain kicks in and goes “get the biggest! …it’ll look really good in the living room”… Then your logical brain justifies it, “oh, well, it is a better image quality…. we have the $$… OK, let’s get it”.

Except, the only thing you bought was their marketing.

When it comes to screen resolution on TV’s there’s very little difference between all the choices.  Let’s look at it in a very simple way:

First, what is HD anyway?  Well, remember your old square TVs?  They use to be 480p.  Here, I’ll show you:

See, it’s simple if you look it that way.  They had 480 pixels in width, and 704 pixels in height.  Then, bam… here came the 720 TV.  Basically, you’re just fitting more pixels per inch, therefore more info, more detail.  See:

Why did they go up?  Remember your old 52″ TV that weighed a ton?  They might of been 52″ except they still showed a resolution of 704×420.  They were crap.  So to improve the quality, they jammed more pixels per inch, and you got 1280×720.  Then they thought, “hey, lets fudge in MORE pixels and charge more!!”.  Then you got the 1080 HDTV that solved all the worlds problems:

Awesome.  So, just like how the 720 improved the old 52″ big screen TV’s that were 480, the 1080 improved the 720.  But, wait one minute.  Ok, maybe a 720 will look bad if it’s a 52″ HDTV… but a 42″?  Nope.  Your eye can’t tell the difference between a 42″, 720 HDTV and a 42″, 1080 HDTV.  Why?  Because technically the only reason you need more pixels is when you get a larger screen size to make up the pixels per inch.  Of course there’s plasma TVs, faster mhz, proprietary technology, but down to the basics, if you’re watching a 42″ HDTV, it doesn’t matter if it’s 720 or 1080.

But what’s funny in all this, even the largest TV in the market is only 2 mega pixels.  Here’s how you get mp’s:

Multiply the resolution (h x w):  1080 x 1920 = 2million, or 2 mega pixels.  It’s funny how marketing, fancy numbers, technical jargon influence your decisions, even though they mean nothing in the end.

Now we’re getting the the meat and potatoes of scanning.  Let’s find out how we can get a high-quality, professional scan from your home scanner.  To recap, I’ve scanned a slide with an Epson V500 Photo scanner, and with the same slide scanned it with a Nikon 9000 ED Film scanner.  Here’s what I got:

So, what I’m going to show you is how to get as close a scan to the Nikon scan from your own home scanner.

Five years ago I bought a top of the line Microtek photo scanner.  Cost me close to $2000.  Funny thing now is, your own scanner, you bought today for $200, has even better scanning capabilities than my Microtek did.  But that’s technology for you.  Anyway, my point is that the hardware from your home scanner is good enough.  Whats not so good is the software they use.  You see, they need to license good scanning software like SilverFast, and Digital Ice technology.  The more expensive scanner you buy, the better software they offer.    It costs them a lot to license, which in turn they make you pay.  Of course, the higher price also means better hardware, but if you’re just doing your own family slides or photos, who cares that your scanner doesn’t have a 16-bit A/D converter.  It’s only the hard core graphic designers who care for those specs.  You still can get a decent image, and here’s how.

Here’s a screen shot of my colour adjustments with the Epson (yours could be a bit different, but that won’t be a problem, as you’ll see soon):

What I suggest in regards to adjusting your settings (colour, Digital Ice, etc) is DO NOT USE THIS.  Don’t even bother clicking on any buttons.  In fact, get as a natural scan as possible.  Your scanner is capable of picking up the pixels, but when it comes to colour correction, dust removal, etc, it’s useless.  But don’t worry.  I’ll show you how to do the “post processing” yourself.  It’s faster and the quality you get will be better than what your home scanner will give you.

So, you scanned your slide, photo, negative with the scanner’s “natural” settings; meaning, you didn’t use any of the adjustments they have setup for you.  You just scanned the original “as is”.

Now, let’s fix up that scan with some free but pwerful software called Gimp.  Gimp is an open source version of Photoshop.  It’s not as powerful as Photoshop, however it does get the job done.  Did I say it’s free?

Get Gimp here:  http://www.gimp.org/.

So let’s see how to adjust the colour and dust removal.  Load up Gimp, and open your scans.

Now that your image is open, head to Colors tab –> Auto –> Equalize.

After that, Colours tab –> Levels … and you get this:

See the black triangle/scoller (circled in red)?  Move that over to the right to darken your image.   Next, lets get rid of the dust/scratches:

Filters –> Enhance –> Despeckle.
And change the setting to about what I have here:

Hit Ok, and here’s your result:

And there you go.  It’s pretty close, and I used a really old/faded slide.  You’ll see if you have kept your originals in good condition, then you’d get better results.

Here, compare for yourself:

So, that’s it.  If you have any questions, you can always email me — Konrad, info@scancanada.ca.

If you want some real expertise, and want a pro to scan your originals, visit us at www.scancanada.ca and digitalcalgary.com.

Thanks for your time,
K.

So, now you know what side to scan.  Great.  Next lets find out what resolution to scan at.  Resolution is kind of confusing, and I’ll throw around a few numbers, but I won’t get too  technical.

First, DPI or PPI:
DPI = dots per inch, PPI = pixels per inch.  They’re the same thing.  The print industry uses dpi, and the hard core graphic designers use ppi to sound smarter.  But it’s the same thing.

So? What’s the big deal with dpi?
DPI has nothing to do with the quality of the image.  It just tells the computer to put 72 dots per inch, or 300, or 4000.  When it does that, it’s not picking up detail… it’s not going in “further” in the photo and picking up minute, say, creases in your jacket to make the image sharper.  It’s just taking more info to make a bigger image.  So, if you’re scanning at 4000 dpi, all you’re doing is taking the same quality image but making it bigger.  That’s all.

Let’s actually compare.  Here’s the photo I’m working with.

And here’s a close up comparison: 72-dpi vs. 300-dpi vs. 600-dpi.

See that? Did dpi sharpen the image?  Did it make it a higher quality scan?  Did it save the day?  No.  Higher dpi just means your image will be bigger.  Which is not a bad thing of course.  Say you want to do some editing, the more info you have, the better.    But, just don’t buy into thinking that higher dpi means better quality.  In fact, anything after 600-dpi you’re losing quality.  Let me explain.

When you get your photos developed, they are at around 300-dpi.  So when you scan that photo, you’re not going to pickup any more detail than 300 dpi.  Once you start going over 600 all you’re doing is now scanning the surface of the photo film, the texture, the gloss, etc.  You’re no longer picking up the image, you’re just scanning minute scratches, dents, finger prints on the photo surface. Just look at my 1200-dpi scan, close up:

If you look closely, you can start seeing the vertical lines from the printer itself; a smudge; and it’s starting to pick up the gloss off the surface of the photo.

So, what’s the best resolution?  Here’s what I do.  Again, I’m using the Epson V500 Photo scanner, but that doesn’t matter because you’re scanner software will have the same buttons I have.

Here’s how I setup my setting for photos:

Keep the resolution at 300-dpi, don’t touch that.  What you do change is the Output Size, or Target Size.  See, my photo is 6″ wide, and 4.13″ height.  I scan, 4×6 @ 300-dpi.

Why 4×6 @ 300-dpi?  Because even today’s 52″ HDTV’s have almost the same resolution.  I might want to scan at 8×12 @ 300-dpi if I’m doing any re-printing, or even 16×24 @ 300-dpi, but only when I’m doing editing for commercial use.  Other than that it’s just over kill.

What about slides and negatives.  Same thing.  I keep the dpi at 300 and change my output to 4×6.

Before we finish, lets compare a 4×6, 300-dpi scan to your 52″, 1080p HDTV.

So, how do they get the 1080p, what does that mean?  I’ll show you:

Your 1080p HDTV is really 1080×1920 pixels.  A 4×6 scan is 1200×1800 pixels.  How do you get that?

Math:

Multiply 300-dpi by 4″:  4 x 300 = 1200
Multiply 300-dpi by 6″:  6 x 300 = 1800

That’s how you get the 1200×1800.
And, do you want to know how you get Mega Pixels?
Multiply 1200×1800 = 2.1 million.  So, 2.1 mega pixels.

Ok, resolution is important, but not to get a quality scan.  How you get a quality scan is all about “post processing”.  But if you have a simple home scanner, and you’ve tried “Digital ICE” or “Colour Correction”, or any other fancy names they give it, you know that it doesn’t work that well.  Next post I’ll show you how, with a few buttons, you can tweak the post processing so you get an excellent, high-quality image scan.

Onto Part III:  Click Here

You don’t need to buy a $3000 scanner to get high-quality scans.  In fact, the one you find at Future Shop for $200 can produce the same result.  I’ll show you how.

Here, compare for yourself.  The first image is a “natural” scan (meaning, straight up, no-buttons-pressed scan) from the Epson.  Middle image is from the Epson, but with a few buttons pressed to improve the image.  The last scan is from the Nikon 9000.

My goal is to get you to get as close to the Nikon scan as possible.  So, lets begin.

Step One:
If you’ve ever tried scanning before, you know that the first question, before anything else, is a simple one:  What side do I scan?  Here’s a quick tip to help you out.

Lets start with a 35mm slide.

There are two sides to a slide, the Matte Emulsion side and the Reflective side:

Matte Emulsion: usually blurry/less reflective, convaved (curved in), and has these little bumpy/beveled lines.
Reflective:  usually shiny, rounded, and it’ll be a smooth surface.

The winner? Reflective! The smooth side.
Always have the reflective side DOWN, toward the glass of your scanner.  This way your images won’t be backwards.

As for negatives, the same technique works as well.  But with negatives you have a cheat:

On a negative, there’s numbers/letters printed on the negative itself.  When you look at it and the numbers aren’t mirrored, then you have the reflective side.  That side goes DOWN towards the glass.

And photos?  Easy.  Face down toward glass.

Next, question you might ask, how big should I scan it?  Or, what resolution should I use?  I’ll have to write another post on that because it’s a whole new topic.  So, onto Part II, Resolution.

PART TWO, click here.