startreksuite Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 Hi everyone! This is my first post in the forum, and made sure to read the sticky posts to avoid getting myself in a bind. My question relates to two other posts that weren't truly answered. I recently went to a con in Vancouver, and took some celebrity photos. It was my first time taking faraway shots, and needless to say, they didn't come out as good as they appeared on the camera's lcd screen. They came out a little blurry or out of focus. I noticed another member asked about this, but I was unsure if he had the same problem. I have found two programs that supposedly will fix out of focus pictures, Unshake and Neat Image. I know sharpen in Paintdotnet doesn't help. Is there a way in this program that can be used to fix my pictures? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks, startreksuite Quote my photobucket my blog my DA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
usedHONDA Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 Sorry, but there isn't a way to do this on any program (or at least to the degree you want it to be done). I suggest either getting an SLR or jumping past the bodyguards to get a better view (or a combination of both). Quote "The greatest thing about the Internet is that you can write anything you want and give it a false source." ~Ezra Pound twtr | dA | tmblr | yt | fb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sagedavis Posted April 2, 2007 Share Posted April 2, 2007 How far away were you? I am assuming that your camer is digital. Your best bet really is to shell out a couple hundred bucks on a camera with at least a 10 (higher if you can get it) OPTICAL zoom. Where people get into trouble is that the cameras they buy may magnify "up to 60 times", but digital zoom is really crummy. With a 12 Optical zoom, you could probably get a good picture of a person from at least a football field away (Of course, this would have to be excellent lighting conditions). Night time images may come out grainy from far away. you really have to play around with the image though, try converting it to raw format and then working from it you might get better results. Sage Quote When in doubt, Try it out. I made this sig file using http://www.anim8or.com and making all of the textures with http://www.getpaint.net I love freeware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
startreksuite Posted April 2, 2007 Author Share Posted April 2, 2007 I figure I was a little better than 30 ft away! Damn preferred tickets! If I had Gold Tickets I would have been anywhere from 5 to fifteen feet away. And since in was in a conference room, the lighting stunk. Read my instruction manual later, which said that this was one of the scenarios where you need to change your light and /or ISO setting. Yeah it's a digital camera, Panasonic Lumix with image stabilization and 6x optical zoom. A couple of my friends there had SLR's, with 10 to 12x optical. I figure if I dealt with using the optical zoom, and zoomed in after the photos were on my hard drive, I wouldn't have these problems. Another issue was people's heads in my way. It kinda pushed me into digital zooming. Is there a free way to put point and shoot images into RAW format? I figured PhotoShop cornered the market on that. Which brought me to my initial question, because I thought I saw a tutorial for PhotoShop in which there was a way to highlight a section of an image with a lasso or something like that and correct a blurred image pixel by pixel. If that is the only way in both instances, I'll chalk it up to a learning experience and do some test shots before dealing with taking scifi celebrity shots and crying about it later. Thanks guys! Quote my photobucket my blog my DA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barkbark00 Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 ...Is there a free way to put point and shoot images into RAW format? I figured PhotoShop cornered the market on that... I think you are missing the point of the RAW format. RAW basicly means that the image file is unprocessed. you can't unprocess a processed image. You wouldn't gain anything...and Photoshop doesn't have anything to do with it. Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAW_image_format Quote  Take responsibility for your own intelligence. 😉 -Rick Brewster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sagedavis Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 Bark, Well, yes, Raw is uncompressed... no, it's not going to change anything, BUT... when you work with uncompressed (anything, video, sound, images), resizing and remastering, CAN (at times), make the final image come out better than working with a compressed file. This especially can work (with image) when you have antialiasing enabled (still haven't tested the AA in paint.net yet). The point is that working with a compressed file type will force any paint/image program to "predict" what the image will then look like compressed. You then further have the option of saving as a less "lossy" format such as TIFF, rather than JPG, and your image might actually come out somewhat better. It all depends on how badly distorted the origional image is. I do the same type of thing with my music and avi files. If they had been mp3 or avi previously, I convert them to an uncompressed format first and then work with editing them. In these arenas, the quality does in fact come out much better than if I worked directly with the lossy format, and I would assume the same could hold true of imaging, for the same logic. I don't expect for you to get any image to come out 20 times better, but, there will most likely be some noticable differences. Perhaps if you post one of the images, someone would be able to help you a little bit better? Sage Quote When in doubt, Try it out. I made this sig file using http://www.anim8or.com and making all of the textures with http://www.getpaint.net I love freeware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barkbark00 Posted April 3, 2007 Share Posted April 3, 2007 The point is that working with a compressed file type will force any paint/image program to "predict" what the image will then look like compressed. This is not true. Once you bring an image in to PDN it is rendered as a bitmap(no compression). The only other point you will see what compression will do to your image quality is when you go to save it. For jpeg you get a preview with a quality slider. That said, If you open a badly compressed jpeg and add a cool border and some text, PDN(even PS) does not actively work to show you what your final image will look like compressed just because you imported a jpeg. That would be ridiculous. I know in PS you can have it show you what effect different compression levels will have on your image, but the active canvas is always accessed as a bitmap image based on the exact pixels that were imported with any changes you may have made. The bad side of image compression, that is avoided by dealing with original RAW files, is the quality loss. There is no effective way to "uncompress" an image (regain lost quality). You would not benefit from converting a compressed image to RAW. In these arenas, the quality does in fact come out much better than if I worked directly with the lossy format, and I would assume the same could hold true of imaging, for the same logic. What your saying here, and I agree, is that if your source file has to be something that was compressed that you are better off saving it (once editing is complete) as a filetype that is lossless. There is no need to convert the image to a lossless format before bringing it into an image editor. Just save the final product as a png or bmp... Quote  Take responsibility for your own intelligence. 😉 -Rick Brewster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
startreksuite Posted April 3, 2007 Author Share Posted April 3, 2007 Thanks BarkBark! I was frantically searching the web, looking for a way to go from jpeg to RAW! Saved me the aggravation, now that I can save an image to bitmap or png. Will do so in the future! :o Quote my photobucket my blog my DA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
startreksuite Posted April 5, 2007 Author Share Posted April 5, 2007 ... Perhaps if you post one of the images, someone would be able to help you a little bit better? Sage Let me see, I'm not too proud of my pics, and if you are a fan of Stargate SG-1 you'll be truly offended. Is there any stipulations that celebrity pics can't be posted without their permission? If I find that I can I'll post them here. :? Quote my photobucket my blog my DA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sagedavis Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Bark, Thanks for that explination. As I said, I just assumed that working with image compressions was similar to working with other media types, perhaps I was wrong... your explination makes much sense. I will say, I have had some limitations working with other image software before. Ones which load a pallet based on the colors used in the image. This posed problems with blurring and such, and I always got confused as to what to do about it. See, I'm not a wiz with imaging... Your statements give me something to think about... Thanks for the correction. Sage Quote When in doubt, Try it out. I made this sig file using http://www.anim8or.com and making all of the textures with http://www.getpaint.net I love freeware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Lionhearted Posted April 5, 2007 Share Posted April 5, 2007 Hooray for peaceful resolution! Instead of "I think this" "you're wrong" "no you're wrong idiot" "well, uh...your mom" Quote My Gallery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
startreksuite Posted April 8, 2007 Author Share Posted April 8, 2007 Perhaps if you post one of the images, someone would be able to help you a little bit better? Sage Sage, I decided to put 3 of my pictures on photobucket, so I'll link them here. They are 800x600, one in jpg format and the other two in bmp. Feel free to email me or post if you have any suggestions. :wink: Here are the links: http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/stargatesuite/david1a.jpg http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/stargatesuite/michael1a.jpg http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q276/stargatesuite/michael2a.jpg Quote my photobucket my blog my DA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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