#digitizing help?
22 messages in this thread
I have recently begun to download ham pictures from the libraries. And as a
result, I have become interested in the digitizing process. I would like to
get into it as a hobby, but I don't know where to start, or what kind of a
setup is required.
My current setup consists of, an A/500 w/1 meg ram. And 3-3.5 floppy
drives. I would like to know what can or can't be done with this system. I
also have an old black and white video camera around here somewhere.
Also, I have converted several pictures from gif to ham, using hamsharp,
and would like to know of how to retouch them after they have been
converted.
Finally, I have seen several ad's for digiview 4.0, the ad's state that all
you need is an A/500, and you can "produce professional quality images."
Does anybody have any input on this?
I am open to any and all comments/opinions, they will be greatly
appreciated.
thanx
Joe
via…New England!
Joe,
You can use a digi-view with your setup, but with certain limitations.
The big constraint is your limited memory. Add two additional megabytes of
memory and you will be able to do anything digi-view is capable of.
Retouching pictures can be a problem. I am not sure what you plan to do
in retouching. Most GIFs, or the ones I usually get, are 640×480
resolution, so I need to resize them. I use ADPro, from ASDG, for this and
other functions. It is a fairly expensive program, but well worth it.
Image Professional from Black Belt Systems is another image processor.
These programs allow you to resize, crop, change lighting, texture, and
produce other effects from your image. A cheaper alternative is to use a
Ham paint program, like digi-paint, and to the best you can with it. If
you are serious, I would suggest an image processor AND a paint program.
ASDG has a lower priced version of their program called The Art Department,
which is not as full of features as ADPro, but costs about half what you
would pay for ADPro. Using any image processor will run into constraints
with your present memory configuration however. Graphics EAT memory!
Digi-view can produce excellent images, though it is very tricky to
learn how to use properly. Lighting is terribly critical, as is your
camera and lens. If you can afford a little more, a scanner like the
JX-100 from Sharp will do a more consistent, and better, job. Full page
(8×10) scanners run around $1,000 right now. The JX-100 can be had for
around $600 or so, but only does about 1/3 page. Again, you may be
bothered by your lack of memory.
Another thing you might consider is adding a hard drive to your system.
A 320×400 interlaced HAM image from digi-view will be 90k or so. It will
be around 280k if you want to save in RGB. Saving your scans can eat up
floppies. Most hard drives for the 500 can be obtained with memory as
well, so you could kill two birds with one purchase.
In graphics, more memory is better. 🙂 With a 500, you probably have
[ MORE ]
I've had Digi-View for years. It quit working one day. In a thread, I found
the culprit might be VirusX, which I had started using, but did not use
Digi-View for awhile. I got it going again, but now I have WB2.0 and it
quit working again! It hangs when I execute the actual digitizing. The
<WAIT> icon locks up, well, the whole dang computer locks up! Anybody know
whats going on? (I tried killing all my commodities, no help).
– Some day, this will be a catchy Whap! signature.
I understand NewTek has a fix for the WB2.0 problem for about $10. You
need to call them.
Bill, K3OZM
Ten bucks, eh? Newtek ought upload this so those with DigiView could access
it easily. Again, just like the SuperGen updated libraries, who but
DigiView owners would make use of it? Are ya listening, NewTek?
– Some day, this will be a catchy Whap! signature.
[ continuation ]
512k of CHIP memory. You can use that, but you may find you can't do all
the effects you might want later on. Having your dealer upgrade you to 1
megabyte of CHIP memory would be a good move.
Converting a standard 640×480 GIF with hamsharp runs right at your
memory limit right now. Most will fit, a few detailled ones won't. 800×600
GIFs, or larger, are too big for your system. You really need a minimum of
3 megabytes, preferably 5 megabytes or more, and one of the image
processors if you want to work the images to your satisfaction.
You say you have an old b&w camera. Maybe it will work with digi-view,
maybe not. Digi-view requies RS-170 monochrome video with 2:1 interlace.
Some cameras use 'random sync' as well, and digi-view does not work with
random sync. The camera should have internal sync, 2:1 interlace, to work
with digi-view.
Enough rambling. You probably now have more questions than when I
started. 🙂
Bill, K3OZM
Bill,
Thanks for the info, I had figured that I was going to be limited by my
current system. A lot of the things you have talked about are far above my
price range, most notably the hard drive, and the scanner. I have been
looking through catalogs, and for $95 I can get an external ram board with
2 meg, it is expandable to 8 meg should I require it in the future. Do you
think this is adequate? Or, do I need more than that for now?
As for the retouching of gifs, I should have made myself more clear on
that. I have a large collection of gif pictures that I downloaded from
another BBS. They are inferior in quality to the ham pictures I downloaded
from AmigaArts. A lot of them seem blurry, and others seem more like the
colors are too bright. What I mainly want to do, is to be able to clean
these pictures up, and make them look sharper and more detailed. Also, I
have some B&W pictures that I would like to colorize.
For now, I will be content just playing with these pictures. In the future
I would like to start digitizing my own (I am becoming more and more
interested in DCTV). Will digipaint-3 be adequate for what I want to do?
Or, do I need something else in conjunction with it?
Thanks for the help.
Joe.
via…New England
Joe,
If the GIFs were blurry, chances are you can't do much with them without
an image processor. Even then you might not get the results you want.
GIFs vary in quality widely.
Digi-paint is a paint program. You could use it to colorize pictures,
or to simulate cropping. I use paint programs to remove those
advertisments BBS love to paste all over the picture. 🙂 If you're a fair
artist, you can play around with images, removing clothes from clad models
(or putting them on nudes), etc.
A better solution for you might be to check out the graphics forums here
on CompuServe. The images are generally high quality, and there are lots
of them. Starting out with a good GIF does make quite a bit of difference.
🙂
Two additional megs, added to your one, give you three. That should be
enough to work with most images of 640×480 or less. At $95.00, I suspect
you are looking at a board for the 2000 though. If you get that, you still
have to buy a chassis to attach it to your 500.
I haven't played with DCTV, but I understand its digitizer is similar to
digi-view. It is (I think) an 18 bit system, so whatever standard paint
program you get it won't work with DCTV. I am not sure what comes with the
DCTV package. It may include a paint program. You would still have to add
lighting, copy stand, cables, etc., and probably a new camera, to use the
digitizing function. You might want to defer a decision on DCTV until you
get some practice working in normal 8 bit modes. (ADPro and ImageMaster
(or whatever Ben is calling it this week) should both work with DCTV
images.)
For the moment, a paint program and some memory should be good enough to
get you going. You will probably want more very shortly, but you can work
with those. The Art Department should run around $100, and would be a
logical next step. (Get the GIF module with it so you can convert and
process the image at the same time.) ADPro is preferable if you can swing
it, but it runs around $250. (Image Master is in the same price category
[ MORE ]
ADpro can be had via Mail order for as low as $150 for Version 2.01
[ continuation ]
as Adpro.)
Bill, K3OZM
Bill,
Sorry for the typo in my last message. I should have read it more
carefully, the price is $195, and it is an A/500 board. I have been going
through a lot of catalogs over the last few days, and I have come up with
what is hopefully a good enough system to begin tinkering with, let me know
what you think.
First of all, is the above mentioned memory board, wich will give me 3 meg
ram. A fatter agnus, wich will give me 1 meg chip ram. And a digiview media
station, consisting of a copy stand with lights, a panasonic 1410 b&w
camera, digi-view, digi-paint 3, and elan performer 2.0.
I can assemble this for a little under $600. However, the descriptions in
the ads were not very detailed on the software package. From what I could
gather, elan performer is basically a slide show program. but, is digiview
in the same vein as adpro or image master? Or will I still need one of
those as well?
Joe
Joe,
Memory is memory. 🙂 $195 sounds more typical. It should do the job
for you.
I am not really familiar with Elan Performer. I thought it was
essentially an animation program, but could be way off base. I don't think
you really want an animation program from your earlier description. In any
case, Digi-View comes with a slide show program, and there are loads of
them in the libraries here in the forum. (I like SuperView from the
libraries…. and the price is right. 🙂 )
Digi-View is a digitizer. It is an hardware interface for the camera to
the Amiga and software to control the digitizing process. The software
does perform some image processing functions, but an image processor gives
more functions and more control over them.
Digitizing is composed of several discrete steps, at least for good
images. First is selection of an appropriate image to digitize. I imagine
everyone can handle this one, though you should be aware that a
photographic system like digi-view or DCTV may have trouble with dark
images.
Second is the actual digitizing procedure. In either digi-view or DCTV
this is done by having the camera scan the image three times, one for each
red, green and blue. The digitized image output is directly related to the
focus of your camera, lighting, quality of the lens, etc. This is a
photographic process, remember.
The third step is processing the image to obtain best results. You can
do a good bit of this with digi-view (and I imagine DCTV) software, though
it is a little more difficult than a real image processor. With ADPro or
IM, you save the digi-view image as a RGB file and optimize it with the
image processor. (You can do it with the HAM image, but using the RGB
output is better.) Cropping out external garbage from the digitization,
resizing it, more precise control over image colors and brightness, etc.,
are things the image processor can do for you that the digi-view software
cannot.
You can get by with the digi-view software and a HAM paint program.
[ MORE ]
[ continuation ]
You do have enough image processing to turn out a reasonable picture with
the digi-view software. The paint program can simulate cropping by
blocking out the unwanted parts of the image with black rectangles. It is
not as neat as using an image processor, but is cheaper. 🙂 Digi-paint is
around $55… just a representative, I didn't look for the 'best' price.
Prices I saw for ADPro and Image Professional were around $150. The Art
Department was around $70. There are some older processors around, like
PixMate or Butcher, which should run around $50. The older ones are not a
full featured as the others, and I think The Art Department
would be a better investment on the cheaper end.
Bill, K3OZM
Bill,
Thank you for all the info over the last couple of days.
I know I don't need (or want) elan performer, but it is included in the
package. As for image master vs. adpro, I stumbled on an april issue of
A/W, and they had an informative article comparing the two. Based upon what
I have read, I am inclined to go with adpro, only because they state that
it has an easier user interface (wich is what I need at this stage). They
also state that image master has a lot of features that adpro lacks, and
for any really serious work, you should use the two of them in conjunction
with each other.
as for the bargain processors, I would rather buy a processor like adpro or
image master, that way when I do become more experienced, I will have the
features that I want.
Joe
If you are using your Digiview, you'll want ImageMaster as it gives you
direct Digiview support. If you have enough memory you can multitask both
programs. If you save your Digiview files as Digiview RGB, you can pull
them into ImageMaster and there are several very valuable Digiview file
massage functions that Adpro just does not have. <- not too mention
everything else you can do!
Margaret,
Thanks, I ordered adpro before reading your message. I am extremely
inexperienced in this area, and have decided to just play around with the
gif pictures I have, to gain an understanding of how things work.
Im sure I will be adding image master to my collection as I progress.
Well you could have started and stayed with Image Master. Having both is
nice but Image Master really makes the difference with Digiview. Also try
getting good RCA cables for the camera like Monster cables. They cost more
but they give you a better signal. Also, get a good lens. I tossed the one
that came with my Panasonic and put on a 35mm lens adapter. Outside of the
software, this can make the greatest difference in the quality of your
digitized images. A better camera would help too.
Joe,
regardin AdPro vs. Image Master, two comments. First, IM _is_ harder to
get into than ADP. Black Belt will argue that it's because it offers more
functions and more choices. Second, you should download their rebuttal to
the AW review. It's in section 6 of Amigavend. Welcome to the wonderful
world of digitizing! You'll love it!
Blaq!
Digiview can do some mage processing tricks, including cahnging
resolutions, but it is not really a full blown image processor like adpro
or imagemaster. This package would be a really good start for almost all
of whatr you need.
Oh yeah, Digi-View uses a B&W camera and a color wheel for color images.
The resolution of the B&W cameras is better than the color video required
by DCTV. DCTV can take a still color video image from a good VCR, still
video camera or camcorder, It digitizes in NTSC color which is like 21-22
bits (this statement usually causes arguments) Elan Performer is for stills
and animation and is like a interactive slide show where each image/anim is
assigned to a key. They can be auto sequenced, or selscted with a key
press. It comes with little pads of paper with blank keyboards so you can
remember what's where.. really cool idea but I haven't used any yet ;-/
Arnie,
Thanks for the advice, it will take me awhile to get used to the more basic
stuff. I have heard of adpro 2.1.0, got any info on this?
Joe
Joe,
that extra 2 Meg of memory will be the smartest purchase you ever made.
For one, it'll enable you to copy all system files into a ramdisk at
bootup, so you'll never see that "Please insert Workbench disk" again. This
alone is worth its weight in gold. You'll also be able to use that famous
Amiga multitasking to a much greater extent. And you'll have enough memory
to digitize and manipulate your images.
Digi-View will digitize color images one color at a time. This means
you'll be using their color filter in front of your black & white camera
and doing three passes. It also means you won't be able to digitize off a
color video signal, like that of a paused VCR. To do that, you'll need a
color splitter, which runs about $100 and does electronically what the
color filters do optically.
DCTV will digitize a color NTSC signal in one pass. It has a wonderful
paint program. And best of all, it allows your Amiga to display full-color
images with much higher quality than HAM! Think of a paused VHS VCR… now
imagine such a picture coming out of your Amiga! DCTV sells for about $400;
add in your memory board and you get the same $600 total, but you gain
great paint software, color digitizing and full-color output. You lose out
in precision (DCTV is a bit blurry; Digi-View can digitize fairly sharply)
but gain a whole lot of possibilities.
And if you ever get a demo of Black Belt's Imagemaster program, you'll
start saving up for it. It's that simple.
Blaq!