Which Software

I'm relatively new to photo manipulation. My computer under XP has Picasa2,
Ifan View, Adobe Photodelux, and Picture Project software installed. I need
some counsel on which of these packages to study and learn how to use to
effectively handle a new project.

I have many, many 35mm slides taken in the 50s and 60s that I want to put on
a good quality light box and take a digital picture of them. I then want to
load them into the computer, extract the image I want, enlarge it, crop it,
and enhance it. Subsequently I'll store them, perhaps in a Yahoo Photo
Album.

If there are better freeware packages than the above for this project
please advise. Thanks

"Jerry" wrote:

I have many, many 35mm slides taken in the 50s and 60s that I want to put
on a good quality light box and take a digital picture of them.

There's a thing called a "slide copier" (Google for it; there's lots out
there). Holds the slides parallel to the camera, and maybe comes with a
magnifying lens (i.e. closeup lens).

Another way to do this is with a film scanner. Nikon makes two 35mm models,
either of which would do a better job of digitizing your slides than a slide
copier.

I then want to load them into the computer, extract the image I want,
enlarge it, crop it, and enhance it. Subsequently I'll store them,
perhaps in a Yahoo Photo Album.

If there are better freeware packages than the above for this project
please advise. Thanks

More than software, what you need is http://www.scantips.com/ to get
started.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David J. Littleboy wrote
There's a thing called a "slide copier"
Another way to do this is with a film scanner.
More than software, what you need is http://www.scantips.com/ to get
started.

Thanks for the hardware advice. I already have equipment that seems to
work. If it does not, I'll look at the scanners.

How about the software question. Any thoughts on that?

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:50:22 GMT, "Jerry"
wrote:


David J. Littleboy wrote
There's a thing called a "slide copier"
Another way to do this is with a film scanner.
More than software, what you need is http://www.scantips.com/ to get
started.

Thanks for the hardware advice. I already have equipment that seems to
work. If it does not, I'll look at the scanners.

How about the software question. Any thoughts on that?

Your Irfanview will do all that you specify in
the original posting, ie cropping, enhancing,
saving etc.

irwell wrote:
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 15:50:22 GMT, "Jerry"
wrote:

David J. Littleboy wrote
There's a thing called a "slide copier"
Another way to do this is with a film scanner.
More than software, what you need is http://www.scantips.com/ to get
started.
Thanks for the hardware advice. I already have equipment that seems to
work. If it does not, I'll look at the scanners.

How about the software question. Any thoughts on that?

Your Irfanview will do all that you specify in
the original posting, ie cropping, enhancing,
saving etc.
It will and by all means hang on to it. Between Picasa and FastStone, I
much prefer the latter. It's good for all post processing (cropping is
excellent) upto but excluding retouching, paint operations and layer
capability. For that I happen to use PhotoPlus, but elements or PSP etc
all seem to be capable of doing same job, some are easier than others,
but they all cost (you can get an earlier version of photoplus for
either free or very little - www.serif.com.
Dave Cohen

"Jerry" wrote:

I then want to
load them into the computer, extract the image I want, enlarge it,
crop it, and enhance it. Subsequently I'll store them, perhaps in a
Yahoo Photo Album.

If there are better freeware packages than the above for this project
please advise. Thanks

Take a look at GIMP, it provides similar abilities to expensive programs
like photoshop but has a more minimalist interface like Irfanview.
http://www.gimp.org/

The main problem with Irfanview for tweaking images is that it has no
histogram display so you have to do it by eye and may end up either
clipping the highlights/shadows or else settling for a suboptimal level
of enhancement in order to avoid that risk.



--
__________________________________________________ _____

While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
__________________________________________________ _____

Jerry wrote:
I'm relatively new to photo manipulation. My computer under XP has
Picasa2, Ifan View, Adobe Photodelux, and Picture Project software
installed. I need some counsel on which of these packages to study
and learn how to use to effectively handle a new project.

I have many, many 35mm slides taken in the 50s and 60s that I want to
put on a good quality light box and take a digital picture of them.
I then want to load them into the computer, extract the image I want,
enlarge it, crop it, and enhance it. Subsequently I'll store them,
perhaps in a Yahoo Photo Album.

If there are better freeware packages than the above for this project
please advise. Thanks

Been there, done that, got the tee shirt.

There is no substitue for a good quality slide/negative scanner. At best,
your copied slides will look awful if you try to copy them onto a digital
camera first and then copy the files across.

I have been using a Plustek 7200 scanner recently and am most impressed with
the results. The Silverfast SE software alone is worth the price. Done about
1000 slides so far.............


Dennis.

Hi,

I have many, many 35mm slides taken in the 50s and 60s that I want to put on
a good quality light box and take a digital picture of them. I then want to
load them into the computer, extract the image I want, enlarge it, crop it,
and enhance it. Subsequently I'll store them, perhaps in a Yahoo Photo
Album.

You can look at Two Pilots software for digital photo editing:
http://www.colorpilot.com/photo_home.html

Sincerely,
Olga

Jerry wrote:
I'm relatively new to photo manipulation. My computer under XP has Picasa2,
Ifan View, Adobe Photodelux, and Picture Project software installed. I need
some counsel on which of these packages to study and learn how to use to
effectively handle a new project.

I have many, many 35mm slides taken in the 50s and 60s that I want to put on
a good quality light box and take a digital picture of them. I then want to
load them into the computer, extract the image I want, enlarge it, crop it,
and enhance it. Subsequently I'll store them, perhaps in a Yahoo Photo
Album.

If there are better freeware packages than the above for this project
please advise. Thanks


You might want to try a good photo scanner with software and slide and
negative mounts. This tends to do the trick, and comes with software to
manipulate the resultant images.

Harry