The GIMP for processing B&W

[Ukko Heikkinen]

Hello again

How stupid of me - I thought that GIMP was an OS.

Anyway, here is something for you to try:

Please go to

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Corel3/Trials/DownloadContainer

and download their 30-day trial version of Paint Shop Pro X.

Then:

Adjust - Brightness and Contrast - Histogram Adjustment - Midtones compress

There are also all the other tools available.

The attchments are meant just to show what kind of effects are possible.

BTW, their softwar requires the latest version of the Windows Installer. It can be downloaded from Microsoft.com.

Ukko Heikkinen

 

[jamiewakeham]

Don't feel silly, Ukko - 'The GIMP' does sound a bit odd!

I may have a look at this free demo. Won't get a chance until next week (10MB broadband at work, 56k modem at home...) but thanks for the heads-up.

Cheers,
Jamie

 

[JohnL]

(snip)

One last q - I've been leaving everything in its rgb format all the way through. Given that I started with B&W negs, is there any real need or benefit to my converting the image to greyscale? I can't see any difference when I do!

Cheers,
Jamie

Keeping rgb leaves you with the possibility of toning later if you wish, as someone pointed out previously. Going to greyscale saves disk space -- the file will be about 1/3 of the size. Of course, you can always convert back to RGB again, if your software supports this.

 

[titrisol]

The only reason to kep the RGB is to tone them later.
You can however change from grayscale to RGB when you want to do that.

One last q - I've been leaving everything in its rgb format all the way through. Given that I started with B&W negs, is there any real need or benefit to my converting the image to greyscale? I can't see any difference when I do!

Cheers,
Jamie

 

[GeneW]

The only reason to kep the RGB is to tone them later.
You can however change from grayscale to RGB when you want to do that.

Another reason to keep them in RGB is that some monitors display greyscale and RGB slightly differently. Greyscale images on my system, for instance, (ViewSonic G90fb) always display slightly darker overall than the same image saved as RGB. For consistency I save everything RGB.

Gene

 

[willie_901]

When GIMP goes above 8 bit, I'll never used PS again.

Mac OSX users can try GIMPshop (still 8 bit). GIMPshop mimics the PS user interface.

willie

 

[T_om]

Here's my shot at it.

Removed noise with Neat Image, corrected tonal scale (I use the Curve tool instead of Levels), added a slight vignette, done.

Tom