Fixing Bad photos.

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willshak - 03 May 2008 13:40 GMT

If anyone interested.
Sometimes, even the worst photos can be improved. Bad lighting, off
color, etc., can be fixed with a couple of clicks in a good photo
editing program.
I use Paint Shop Pro 9 (for brevity, PSP9).
I used to be a private beta tester for Paint Shop Pro. I even had an all
expense paid trip to the Jasc headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minnesota
for a weekend.
For less than a hundred bucks, Jasc's PSP was probably the biggest
competitor of Adobe's Photoshop at $600.
Paint Shop Pro 9 was the last version (and IMHO, the last best version)
offered by Jasc. After that, the company was sold to a competitor, Corel.
Under Corel's ownership, the program was diluted in their later
versions. After all, it was a program that did everything in one program
that Corel needed 3 programs to do. Corel's Draw, Corel's Photopaint,
and Corel's Painter. The latest PSP version by Corel is version 12, or
as they say XII. Don't waste your money.
Just to show what PSP9 can do to a bad photograph with only a few clicks
of a mouse and no talent, see the photo over in a.b.s.m under this same
title. I took one of the photos of the Southern Expo Show pics posted by
mattjack on his site:
http://www.freewebs.com/mattsmilitarymodelsite/apps/photos/photo.jsp?photoID=2269397
And with those few unadjusted clicks, showed the before and after on one
pic split in half.

Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with PSP anymore, and have no interest
in Corel making any money for f**cking up a great program. PSP 9 was the
last Jasc offering. PSP 8 does not have the photo editing shortcuts that
I used on the photo.
Check eBay for 'Paint Shop Pro 9'. You'll find prices from less than $10
with free shipping, and up. You'll probably only get the CD and no box
or manual with the cheapest prices, but the Help and Tutorial files
included in the program installation are pretty good.

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Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
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willshak - 03 May 2008 15:29 GMT

on 5/3/2008 8:40 AM willshak said the following:

> If anyone interested.
> Sometimes, even the worst photos can be improved. Bad lighting, off
[quoted text clipped - 31 lines]
> box or manual with the cheapest prices, but the Help and Tutorial
> files included in the program installation are pretty good.

I forgot to mention that there is an update patch for PSP 9 which is PSP
9.01. The patch is free.
Corel has it on their site at
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CorelCom%2FLayout&cid=1153321224
268&c=Content_C1&lc=en&pid=1153321344260
or http://tinyurl.com/ga6nw
Corel also maintains a newsserver and groups for their products.
Add a new newsserver account in your mail/news client and name it
cnews.corel.com
In the 'subscribe to groups' or 'manage subscriptions' box for
cnews.corel.com, enter paintshoppro, or shoppro, in the group search to
get all paint shop pro groups.

Be advised that the groups were robo-moderated when they first started
up. That is, certain words or phrases could trigger the robo-moderator
to hold the message until a human moderator checks the message. This
took time before the message would appear in the group, sometimes over
the weekend.
I don't visit the group very much anymore, so I don't know if the robo
is still active. When you read the group messages, you might find some
members mention messages that didn't get posted. If so, then the robo is
still working. Knowledgable members use tricks to get around the
robo-moderator. i.e. misspelling suspect words, adding special
characters in a suspect work, like f*u*c*k, or reposting the whole text
message as a gif image attachment, which has no plain text for the robo
to search.
The good part is there is no spam, and trolls and troublemakers are
kicked out after complaints are made.

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Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
To email, remove the double zeroes after @

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the Legend of LAX - 03 May 2008 17:43 GMT

> I use Paint Shop Pro 9 (for brevity, PSP9).

I am using version 7.5. Is 9 enough better to justify upgrading?

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willshak - 03 May 2008 18:56 GMT

on 5/3/2008 12:43 PM the Legend of LAX said the following:

>> I use Paint Shop Pro 9 (for brevity, PSP9).
>
> I am using version 7.5. Is 9 enough better to justify upgrading?

Just for that one-step photo fix in 9 it is.
It also has a straightening tool (for off-level photos), a scratch
remover tool, perspective correction, and scripting (for batch
operations on multiple images).

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Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
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Richard Brooks - 03 May 2008 21:18 GMT

willshak said the following on 03/05/2008 18:56:

> on 5/3/2008 12:43 PM the Legend of LAX said the following:
>>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> remover tool, perspective correction, and scripting (for batch
> operations on multiple images).

I'm interested in the scripting, seriously! Is it a bog standard
thing or a C core based language with file in/out and all the rest.
There is still nothing close to an 8-Bit DOS based program I'm still
using and I have been on the lookout. Sadly it came to "No!" when
asking if there was a scripting language.

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willshak - 03 May 2008 23:47 GMT

on 5/3/2008 4:18 PM Richard Brooks said the following:

> willshak said the following on 03/05/2008 18:56:
>> on 5/3/2008 12:43 PM the Legend of LAX said the following:
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
> using and I have been on the lookout. Sadly it came to "No!" when
> asking if there was a scripting language.

It's a Python program language. You can record a script by just turning
on the scripting button, do all kinds of adjustments, then stop
recording and save the script with a unique name, then use that same
script on other images which will apply all the recorded adjustments or
steps in the script.
http://www.python.org/
There is a newsgroup on the Corel newsserver just for PSP scripting
where you can pick up many scripts that were made by PSP users. Many
have been saved for download on user's websites.

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Richard Brooks - 04 May 2008 18:04 GMT

willshak said the following on 03/05/2008 23:47:

> on 5/3/2008 4:18 PM Richard Brooks said the following:
>> willshak said the following on 03/05/2008 18:56:
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>>
>> I'm interested in the scripting, seriously! Is it a bog standard

[snipped - boring crap by me!]

> It's a Python program language. You can record a script by just turning
> on the scripting button, do all kinds of adjustments, then stop
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> where you can pick up many scripts that were made by PSP users. Many
> have been saved for download on user's websites.

I did a bit of research after reading your previous posting and it is
still not 'meaty' enough.

The old-in-the-tooth 8-Bit Animator Pro has that sort of thing but it
also has an actual language where one can do things like this example
which is a short segment of something I knocked up which gives
animated wavering scratches with pop-up control panels that the user
designs. In this case how many scratches, how they appear and
disappear, density....

> int particle_size=1, particle_number=30;
> Particle()
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> nums[os]=nums[os]+scratch_waver;
> hoff[os]=offset[os] + (sin(nums[os])*scratch_drift);

Being 8-Bit it's better used for opacity masks or low-res animated
pictures (waving trees or grass, for example) but still indispensable.

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Peter W. - 04 May 2008 08:50 GMT

> If anyone interested.
> Sometimes, even the worst photos can be improved. Bad lighting, off
[quoted text clipped - 34 lines]
> In Hamptonburgh, NY
> To email, remove the double zeroes after @

Bill,
you're mixing Apples and Oranges here. I'm not a PSP user but I do
use Corel Draw (and PhotoPaint). I have been since version 3. To me
it sounds like PSP is a bitmap editor (which would be equivalent to
PhotoPaint).

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and publishing program. Vector
drawings and bitmaps are totally different animals!

You can blame Corel (or whoever owns them now) for messing PSP up.
Just don't mix vector-based and bitmap-based editors.

:-)

Peteski

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willshak - 04 May 2008 14:03 GMT

on 5/4/2008 3:50 AM Peter W. said the following:

>
>> If anyone interested.
[quoted text clipped - 52 lines]
> Peteski
>

PSP added vector drawing back in version 6. It does both raster and
vector drawings, even both together on one image when using layers.
Here's just one site that shows vector drawing with PSP 6.

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Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
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willshak - 04 May 2008 14:14 GMT

on 5/4/2008 9:03 AM willshak said the following:

> on 5/4/2008 3:50 AM Peter W. said the following:
>>
[quoted text clipped - 60 lines]
> vector drawings, even both together on one image when using layers.
> Here's just one site that shows vector drawing with PSP 6.

Ooops. Forgot the link.
http://www.dumlao.cc/psptutorials/ronstoons.com/vector.shtml

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Peter W. - 05 May 2008 09:50 GMT

> on 5/4/2008 9:03 AM willshak said the following:
>
[quoted text clipped - 74 lines]
>
> Bill

Ah, I see.

I sit corrected! :-)

I do a lot of manual and automatic tracing of bitmaps into vectors.
I'm not sure if PSP could do all that CorelDraw does for me. I'm used
to CorelDraw and quite comfortable with it. But OTOH it sounds like
PSP's bitmap editor can do some really useful tasks (even in the older
versions).

BTW, I'm using CorelDraw 7 and 10. I have no need for the "latest and
greatest" either.

Peteski

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Model Forum / General / Models / May 2008

Fixing Bad photos.