Working With Pictures Part 2 by Iowa Silver Baron Bammer

[CSJournals-migration]

Is it washed out?

 

Here is the photo shot in the AdobeRGB color space. Quite frankly, looking at both with my editing software on my monitor, I can not tell a bit of difference. What do you think?

 

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[jayman1970]

I looked at both several times and they both looked the same.I cant seem to get my pictures that good!

[SPHansen]

Glad to have played some small part! I found that I use the RAW format, and with Photoshop I can adjust some of the settings such as color temperature, exposure, etc. I guage my success by looking at the coin itself and seeing if all the details that I can see are present in the image... I want to present the coin as I see it as best I can!

 

I think it looks great... To my eye, the second one has lighter shadows and darks than the first.

[coinsbygary]

As a matter of taste, I prefer sharper photos with good contrast between light and dark. The washed out look makes it appear like you are looking at the coin through smoke. Again, the personal preference of the owner rules supreme.

 

Experiment around with different settings on your camera, experiment with the lighting which in photography is of the utmost importance. Then do side by side comparisons and pick what you like the best. From the looks of it you have a good start. I use Photoshop Elements and Picasa 3 to do my editing, as both are useful to me for different functions of editing. Most of all, enjoy what you are doing.

Gary

[JAA]

They both look very similar. Do you use a photo stand to take the pictures and how is the shot lighted?

[Iowa Silver Baron Bammer]

Thanks to all who have responded so far. I'm going to reply to some of the points made. To jaa, I have the cameral mounted on a very sturdy adjustable copy stand. The light source, believe this or not, is an old (high school graduation present a lot of years ago) flourescent lamp with two small cool white bulbs. I have tried a lot of different bulbs, as the copy stand came with light fixtures, but then I had too much light. I am planning on getting a diffusion tent in the near future, that may help with the bulbs.

 

As to the second one being washed out, I could have done that with my photo editing. Right now I am using Microsoft Picture It 10 Premium for color balance, white blance, cropping, etc. Then I use Microsoft Office Picture Manager to compress the images for NGC journals. I do have Photoshop, but I am not comfortable using it yet.

 

Gary, one point about my camera, when it shoots in raw format, it overrides my manual white balance settings. Fortunately, it seems the white balance on the image is not really very bad, considering it's been overridden. I keep reading my manual and Mark Goodman's book entitled "Numismatic Photography". I am trying to get better. Quite frankly, I like the first image the best. Before I started this test of different color spaces, I was shooting all photos with the sRGB color space. I printed some out, and had the store where I bought the cameras print out some prints, and they were impressed with the images. Possibly the best solution would be to shoot in the sRGB color space because I do want to post pictures to NGC, and then see how I like the printed images.