updated photos in registry

[toneddollars]

I have started to upgrade my photos in my NGC registry set. I have only upgraded the NGC coins as of now. I will be working on the PCGS coins in the next week or so. Please feel free to coment one way or the other. If you look at some of the PCGS photos and then the NGC photos you SHOULD be able to see the difference.

 

TD

[EVillageProwler]

TD,

 

I looked at some of your pretty Morgans. They really are nice, but I think you may want to play around with trying to capture both luster and color. No sacrificing of one for the other allowed!

 

Make sure that you have a strong light source directed onto the coin, but be sure to angle the coin slightly (relative to the camera lens) so that the cartwheel luster is more visible.

 

Also, feel free to tweak the contrast and brightness a bit via photoshop or whatever...

 

EVP

 

[toneddollars]

EVP

 

I have not tweaked the colors or contrast for to many people get all over you for not showing the coin as it appears. I have two light sources that I'm using and also I am tilting the coin as much as I can with out distorting it. Thanks for the critque. I'm always trying to get better photos any way I can. I think there is a big difference between the NGC coins and the PCGS coins as far as color and luster are conserned. Did you notice a difference?

[EVillageProwler]

TD,

 

I would have a problem if you were using a "white" light source and then deciding that it was ok to use the "color balance" feature to add more red, blue, green or whatever to your coins. Also, in the latest Photoshop, you can use a "smoothing" function that will essentially erase marks that is nearly impossible to detect.

 

I consider that type of tweaking to be no-no's because it is unfaithful.

 

However, using "contrast" and "brightness" merely takes the information already encapsulated into the bits-n-bytes of the image file and accentuating one characteristic over another. This should be legit since you are taking a 3D obj (the coin) and transposing that into a 2D obj (the image). Whenever you do that, you already have to choose between this trait or that trait to accentuate.

 

In short, some tweaking is actually adding info not actually present on the coin. Other tweaking is merely highlighting that which is already on the coin.

 

As far as the diff between NGC and PCGS are concerned, I think the effect you are seeing is from the holder. The NGC holder uses what I think is a more opaque type of plastic, and forces me to adjust for the "softness" of the image. The PCGS plastic allows me to take a much "sharper" image.

 

EVP

 

[TomB]

Beautiful coins, TD, and nice work! As soon as I saw this thread's title I knew I would be having a good time looking at superb coin images.

 

Looking at the Morgan set I am reminded of one of the reasons I do not collect Morgans...there are too darn many of them! That, coupled with the fact that I know precious little about the series and I actually don't like the design.

 

It's also really cool how you put multiple coins under one date such as the 1878 7TF Rev 1878. That's cool, you have nice coins and are willing to share them.