(Pat) wrote in news:f7a99267.0408081958.33159551
@posting.google.com:

I have a couple slides I scanned that look fine in Windows Photo/Fax
Viewer (or whatever it is you get when you click on a .jpg in XP).
However, one of them looks totally washed out (like 5 shades lighter)
and streaky when I open it in a photo editor - I used Arcsoft and
Gimp. It's got a dark background, but I've tried others that also are
dark and they look OK in the editors.

Now, this particular slide is from a rock concert, Ektachrome 400
pushed to 800, so it's not your average snapshot. But how come it
looks OK in the standard MS viewer, even when I blow it way the heck
up??

I assume that the MS Photo/Fax viewer is trying to be clever and
compensate for (what it thinks) is a too dark picture. It is a rather
annoying program.

And what's the picture **really** look like, if I ever get around to
putting it up on a Web site?

It shall look like you want it to look

I recommend you to get some kind of image manipulation program.
There are good and rather cheap ones. You can download irfanview
for free, but it is really a viewer with some possibilities to
manipulate. Photoshop elements is useful, and not all that expensive.
As a matter of fact, you get it very often for free when you buy
some printing or scanning hardware.

Now - back to the topic. Almost all pictures needs some kind of
simple manipulation to look good. The most common is "levels", a
tool that assures you that white is white and black is black.
Some color balancing is also nice, but that is harder. Some light
sharpening just before printing is sometimes good also. Maybe there
are dust spots. Nice to remove them.


/Roland