I CAN DIGITALLY ENHANCE YOUR PHOTO ...

This Sara Moon image ("The Queen") came to me from K Martin (many thanks!). You can quite clearly see her doing her bit in the reflection of the glass - for which she offered her apologies(!) Fact is, I'd rather have the reflection than no image, so many thanks again 'K'.

With Photo enhansing computer programs, it is possible (with a little patience!) to get the kind of result above right. OK, the reflection is gone - but notice also the left ear gets its point back and the frame edges have been pulled out. The result isn't perfect by a long way - but it does show what can be achieved.

Below are a couple of examples of how dark images and converging verticals can be corrected too - not to mention that oh-so-often present flash glare!

Then there are far worse situations. such as damage ...

(Cropped for detail)

Well - Never having been one to resist a challenge ... click the image to see how it went.

PHOTO TIPS

Quite obviously I would much rather receive best possible images in the first place,
so here are a few tips:

1) Avoid flash. Just stand your picture in an area of good light - preferably with the image facing the light and any glass relections being toward a dark area - wear dark clothing, it really does help. Those with better quality cameras could use a polarizing filter to kill the reflection - they're great for breaking through water reflections too.

2) If you get yourself a roll of masking tape, you could consider taking the picture out of the frame to take the photo. You may even find out a little more about your image as detail is often hidden behind the mount and occasionally on the rear of the print.

3) Get your camera and your picture as square on to each other as possible. The picture above right was probably taken from about two feet above the image (doubtless to avoid the flash-back) but converging verticals will always be the result.

4) Hold the camera very steadily. If you don't have a tripod, consider sitting on a reversed dining chair and using the back as a rest. It helps to put a folded towel over the top of the chair and then press the camera down into it before pressing the shutter.

If you are lucky enough to have a half-decent digital camera, ( 2 mega pixcels +) then you are more than half-way home. Like video cameras they have an ability to absorb light more efficiently than most ordinary cameras and so getting a good result could be a lot easier.

SCANNING AN IMAGE THAT'S TOO BIG FOR YOUR SCANNER

There are several reasons that this occurs and all can usually be cured:

The short answer is:

Be sure your image is set very squarely on the surface of the scanner.

Scan the image at 300 dpi if you can.

A 'gauzed' picture on your screen may still print perfectly well. If not read on ...

If you can't resolve a 'gauzed' image on your screen - read on ...

Your print is made up of tiny dots, there are likely to be 150 to 300 dot to the inch (25cm) in rows and columns across and down the image.There could be more (say 600) but I doubt there would be less.

Your scanner and indeed your computer screen are made up in a similar way, but here they are called pixcels. A typical modern computer screen will have 1024 pixcels across and 768 down. Some older, smaller models are 800 x 600.

Now, Imagine laying two pieces of plain fine net curtain one on top of the other - or even try it. As you move the top sheet across the bottom sheet 'gauzing' occurs, like waves of solid colour where the tiny holes of one sheet are blocked by the thin strands of the other sheet creating a visual solid mass alongside areas where the holes on both sheets remain well enough aligned for your eye to see through both. That is 'gauzing'.

On you computer and printed image, those holes are the equivelent of the dots and pixcels. So to cure it one of two things (or both) needs to happen. Firstly, you need to be sure that the image on your scanner is exactly square with the scanner surface.(See how the picure above is tilting slightly) Also, and this may sound silly, check that the printed image is square with the edge of the paper it is printed on too, because you may be butting the edge of your paper to the frame of the scanner bed and still getting gauzing because the image is not 'square' on the paper! This can easliy happen where images have been cut out or cut down, and is rare on an untouched print.

The other matter is slightly more difficult to explain, but here goes ...

Each of those dots on your print, or pixcels on your screen can only be one colour. Remarkably in print thats just four colours - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black - the White being made up of the paper it is printed on. Printers call this "CMYK" processing. So, if you try to scan a 300 dpi print, using a scanner that is scanning at 100 dpi (or pixcel rate) your computer will make decisions about what colour to make each one dot out of the colours that one dot is copying. That is reasonably OK where the scanner is copying a clear blue sky (eg: three blue dots become one blue dot) , but where that sky meets the leading edge of a yellow shirt for example anything can happen as the computer must decide what single colour these (say) two blue dots and one yellow dot are going to be.

The answer is to scan at a resolution (dpi) of equal or greater size than the original so that each scanner dot is equal to each printed dot or greater. You can only guess what dpi your image is printed at of course, but in general terms around 300 dpi works well. Much higher than that will cause a long copy time and a very large image on your screen.

So you did that, and it still looks gauzed - WHY? ...

I could go on to discuss re-sizing the actual image on screen etc, but I'm going to resist that with one important exeption: Remember what I said about your screen being made up of 'dots' too? Well, unfortunately this means that sometimes a perfectly well scanned image (as above) can appear to be 'gauzed' when in reality it is not. This only happens where you are looking at a good scanned image on your screen at a compressed size, that is at less than 100% of true 1:1 size. See example photo above - This is on screen at 10% of actual size. This can happen where you have asked your photo editing program to show the image 'full screen' rather than full size - squashing those picture pixels behind the pixels on the screen and taking us back to the net curtain analogy again.