[filmscanners] Re: What can you advise?

["Preston Earle" <PEarle@triad.rr.com>]

I asked: "Can you give me some guidance on the Polaroid DSR filter
settings. I've tried it a couple of times and can't make much sense from
it. ("Help" is probably very clear once a guy understands how to work
the program.)"

"Arthur Entlich" <artistic-1@shaw.ca> replied:
"1) Are you using the PS plug in or the stand alone (they have different
features)
"2) did you read the read me file which gives some basics on setting the
stand alone variables?
"3) In the stand alone, most of the tools are very simple forms of PS
style tools.
"4)  If you think its a bit confusing now, you should have seen the
first beta versions.  I tried to get a much more logical "human
interface" put on it, but financial resources ran low at that time so it
was released in a somewhat rawer state than I'd liked to have seen....

If you can use the PS plug in, it work for most situations, with few
adjustments.  The stand alone is more of a manual approach, but has more
features."
--------------

(1) I've tried both. Most of the time I've ended up trying the
stand-alone version because it is easier to see what's going on with the
settings.
(2) Yes, I've read the help files. I'm underwhelmed by the "help" like,
under Defect Detection>Generate Defect Mask>Tile Size it says "The size
of the region used to gather statistics about defects. Tip: Start by
setting this to the maximum value (64). If small dust spots in the image
are not detected, reduce it." What does "64" mean? Is it pixels? What is
a typical value? With so many variables, a trial and error approach was
more than I wanted to tackle.
(3) The problem isn't the tools, it's the settings: Tile size, Defect
Level, Mask Size.

This reminds me a little about the difficulty I had in getting started
with the Photoshop USM filter. When I learned that a good starting point
is Threshold of 3, a Radius of .5 for screen or 1.5 for print, and
adjust Amount to "whatever looks right", the tool became much more
useful. If all the settings depended upon the image, such that there was
no good standard starting point, it would much less useful. I'm hoping
the DSR filter has a set of good, useful starting values such that I
don't have to worry about 56 Tile sizes, 100 Defect levels, and 12 Mask
sizes.

When I get to a difficult problem, my boss reminds me that "all things
that are now easy were once difficult." I remind him that "he who has a
choice has trouble."

Preston Earle
PEarle@triad.rr.com


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe by mail to listserver@halftone.co.uk, with 'unsubscribe 
filmscanners'
or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or 
body