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Contains: B&W Photos The SOTM Vote Note Web Page Errors/Updates Digital Images Sent In As Too Dark Important Note On Sharpen Filter File Backup/Loss Prevention Greetings: B&W Photos: I am working on a Black & White Photo Gallery page for the site. If you have any B&W RR images that you would like to consider submitting, please contact me. The SOTM vote for this month had the highest quantity of votes received so far. It looks like the SOTM feature is gaining interest, but discussing the results afterward is not. Just an observation. Again, for those who didn't realize it, there are other pages of the site to put your images on as well. Please report any web page errors (and dead links) on the site to me so that I may fix them. Notes that say that, "I haven't visited the site in months because there was a page crashing my browser then" are not much help to me now, especially if I don't know and I am not having the same problem here. As I mentioned before, I reduced the update frequency to the web site images on the main page to about twice a month. I plan one this evening from the compiled digital images that were sent to me, and another soon from images here that I will scan. Then I plan to return some more slides to the photographers that sent them. If you ever need anything back sooner, just ask. Images coming to me as too dark: Lately, I have been getting several digital image submissions from SPORRS members for the web site that are too dark. I am referring to the brightness of the digital files as prepared on your own computers. If you are looking at the sporrs web site and also your own images on your computer side by side and your images look darker, then they are too dark. A lot of this may have to do with the brightness setting that your monitor is set at, so this may be throwing some of you off on brightness perspective. My monitor is correctly calibrated, and I prepare the SPORRS web site on this machine, so if you send me a file that is finished, then it needs to be like all of the rest of them, so please check this first. I already sent out notes to those who sent in images that were too dark in the last couple of weeks. Important notes about the Sharpen filters: Also, please do use Sharpen or Unsharp Mask when you need to, but if it doesn't make you image look any sharper, but instead makes it look 'posterized', then don't use (undo) that last application of that filter. You should only have to use the Sharpen filter once, each time you physically reduce the dimensions of your digital file (and once again on the thumbnail file). The Sharpen filter only works by doing the opposite of the Anti-Alias type settings in graphics programs, and it cannot fix an image which is not sharp to begin with. In other words, it "sharpens" the effects that other digital filters, size reductions or scanning processes have on the image, but it will not make your soft image sharp. The best way to see this is to do this on your own in your own software. When you think you are done with your image file, apply a sharpen filter to see if it helps, and if it doesn't, then undo it or don't save it that way. If you think you need a little sharpen but the Sharpen filter is too much (and your slide and scan were sharp), then use Unsharp Mask (if you have it) where you can control the degree of apparent "sharpness". And a note about backing up your files: Do you guys keep backup copies of your important files in a safe place or regularly backup your hard drive(s)? You may want to consider how important this can be. Last week when one of my hard drives took a permanent vacation, I lost the entire SPORRS web site (and all of my web files) along with all of your image files. Luckily I had run a backup of that drive (on a Jaz Disk) two days before, so I was able to restore nearly everything, and I lost nothing important. I had made a few changes to some web documents after the backup, but I was able to get those file copies back off of the server computer. It pays to backup. Regards, Dave Cohen SPORRS List Owner/Webmaster ======================================================= -> SPORRS: 'Serious Photographers Of Railroad Related Subjects' -> Web Site: http://www.anet-stl.com/acphotog/sporrs/ -> Message © 1998 SPORRS® - All Rights Reserved =======================================================
