A while ago I bought a scanner to scan some of my photos,
did a few hundred with it over a period of months (boring
and time-consuming), and was never really happy with the
results: muted colors and not much clarity, even if I upped
the scanning resolution and fiddled with gamma correction.
(I could scan at up to 600 dpi, but usually used 150dpi
since it didn't seem to make much of a difference for the
target size I wanted, ~900x600 pixels.) Samples:
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/1999/09/nyc/
Anyway, I came across this site tonight that might have been
useful back then:
SCARSE: Scanner CAlibration ReaSonably Easy
http://www.scarse.org/
> What is it?
>
> Scarse is a free color calibration and management software
> package. It lets you build and use ICC profiles. Custom profiles
> can be generated from variety of calibration targets. Scarse is
> intended for (and developed on) Unix machines and is distributed
> under the terms of GNU Public License.
>
> Scarse project was born out of my desire to be able to get good
> scans which are consistent across large batches, and do it with
> minimal amount of manual tweaking. It is intended for serious
> photographic or prepress applications, and is most useful with
> high-end film scanners. If you just want to occasionally scan a
> snapshot of your aunt on your $100 flatbed and don't care about
> the colors as long as they are snappy, don't bother, this package
> is not for you.
It's written by a guy at the U of Alberta (Andrei Frolov), who
has some other useful stuff nearby, including:
Adjust Your Monitor -- test patterns and notes on adjusting
computer video systems
http://ohm.phys.ualberta.ca/photo/calibrate/
| Before you start working with photo images on your computer (or
| even view them), you should really make sure that your
| video system is displaying things correctly. These pages will
| assist you in this task by providing patterns to test different
| things.
Also, he some great photos of the Albertan rockies:
http://ohm.phys.ualberta.ca/photo/gallery/alberta.html
including:
Fryatt Lake
http://ohm.phys.ualberta.ca/db/image/PCD0589/013-8.html
which I *think* is the same lake as the one in the background of
this photo:
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/1992/07/valley.jpg
(which may be my all-time favorite photo, though it's a lame scan.)
also:
Northern Lights over Edmonton:
http://ohm.phys.ualberta.ca/db/critique/PCD0589/003-2.html
(cool, but not nearly as cool as the real thing)
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/