RESIZING IMAGES, HELP PLEASE!!!!

I have just downloaded Nikon capture nx from their website and it is a great bit of software for processing nef files. Rawshooter seems to have a problem reading nef files it seems, espesialy on the terms of contrst, sharpness, colour temperature and saturation.

I wrote an action for photoshop to do this – its available to download at

http://www.bestsharing.com/files/ms00179917/Airliners.atn.html

try it -it works for me everytime

No problem 🙂

Thanks for the clarification, Gareth.

Absolutely right.

I’ve still got 7 on my hard disc and it doesn’t pick up the Nikon RAW on my card despite the fact it offers *RAW as a file type option on the Open File dialogue box.

Sorry for the duff info posted earlier.

Moggy

Sadly yes, Photoshop 7 doesn’t natively handle camera RAW images. (The ‘RAW’ files mentioned in the help file are for ‘undocumented formats, such as those created by scientific applications’ rather than the proprietary camera file formats created by Nikon, Canon etc, unfortunately Papa Lima).

CS 2 and later versions of Photoshop Elements have raw converters built in, but support was never retrospectively made available to the earlier versions. If you were processing camera RAWs in Photoshop 7 Moggy, it was because you had a plug-in installed for that particular file type.

From my Photoshop 7 Help files:

To open a file using the Raw format:

Choose File > Open or File > Open As (Windows).
Choose Raw from the file format list, and click Open.
For Width and Height, enter values for the dimensions of the file.
To reverse the order of the width and height, click Swap.
Enter the number of channels.
Select Interleaved if the file was saved with an interlaced data option.
Select a color depth and, if necessary, a byte order.
For Header, enter a value.
If you are missing the dimensions or header value, you can have Photoshop estimate the parameters. Either enter the correct height and width values to estimate the header size, or enter the correct header size to estimate the height and width, and then click Guess.
To have Photoshop retain the header when you save the file, select Retain When Saving

You sure about Photoshop 7 and RAW?

I’m on CS2 here at work and it handles Nikon RAW files without a glitch.

I can’t ever remember having had a problem when I used 7, though I can’t swear that I ever processed a RAW file with it (I rarely shoot in RAW except for some very occasional work stuff)

Moggy

No, your version of Photoshop (7.0) will not open Nikon D70S raw files as it is John. You have the option of installing a plug-in from Nikon to allow as this (to a very limited extent, no adjustments bar exposure and white balance being possible), or upgrade to the latest version on photoshop that will allow D70S RAW files to be fully manipulated.

Personally I prefer to use Nikon Capture to process my raw files which are then passed over to photoshop for finishing off as web jpgs. Its available as a 30 day free trial if you want to experiment with it. I’m still with Photoshop 7 too and this method works well for me.

The halo and oversharpening are definitely processing artefacts I’m afraid John, rather than heat haze. (which means it should be easy to get rid of them since it was taken as a raw image). Here’s what I mean by a halo, it goes from dark, to white to light.

and here is the stair stepping problem

As I say they are purely artefacts introduced in the processing stage so it should be an easy remedy.

But will reduce the file size by a useful 25% or so.

Some people are still on dial-up.

Moggy

Nope, file size is identical. For example

a 600 pixel wide image at 300ppi

74783 bytes(74KB)

the very same image, same level of compression, at 72ppi

74783 bytes (74KB). Identical. Pixels and level of compression used affect file size, not PPI setting.

The only difference is if you print the images the first one will be 2 inches wide, the second one 8.33 inches wide (and that is assuming you are printing from an application that understands the ppi tag, and the PCs printer driver does not rescale the image to fit the paper being used)

Thanks for the tips chaps, I will have to get into Adobe!, does it convert RAW to jpeg ?

John.

Yes.

Moggy

Thanks for the tips chaps, I will have to get into Adobe!, does it convert RAW to jpeg ?.

Gareth Horne, I value your advice but the picture I posted has had no adjustments what so ever, I used Rawshooter to view and was happy with it so converted it to jpeg, the ‘helo’ effect you talk about is new to me I put it down to it actually being heat haze of the subject as it was 30+ deg that day.

I will sit down tonight and try infraview and also get to grips with adobe, once again thanks for the pointers.

Regards

John.

Which won’t make a blind bit of difference to what it actually looks like on screen..

But will reduce the file size by a useful 25% or so.

Some people are still on dial-up.

Moggy

But it is saved at 300 ppi….

Which won’t make a blind bit of difference to what it actually looks like on screen, its still a 1000×1510 image being displayed in a web browser.

Whilst I appreciate that’s rather large for a post on a forum (half that would be plenty) messing with the ppi tag (that’s all it is, a data tag, correctly ignored by the vast majority of programs) is a red herring as far as solving the problem being presented. Sort out the sharpening issue first, then decide on the size (in pixels) you want for the image on screen.

I’d be happy to look at the original for you if you like John, Nikon users like ourselves often seem to be in the minority 🙂

But it is saved at 300 ppi, pointless for screen viewing. 72 is the best that a monitor can discriminate.

In Photoshop go to Image > Image Size.

Reduce the PPI to 72

Set the dimensions to whatever you want. 750 wide is plenty for on here.

Use File > Save for Web to resave the image under its final name.

Moggy

Its quite badly oversharpened, you’ve got visible halos on the light/dark boundaries and stair stepping on the diagonals. Try backing off the unsharp mask when processing.

If photoshop is a bit daunting give Infraview a go, its ok for free and does an easy ‘resize for web’.

hth

It doesn’t look pixelated to me, but I have been previously advised to resize in stages to avoid this problem.

Hope this helps.

CM