You never stop learning

Last night I delivered a copy of the photo CD of our reunion that I created not long ago (and mentioned here) to Pat Kessler, and while I was there, she showed me a print of a picture she had taken at the reunion of Don Vernine. It was quite good. Don was smiling in it and there were very few distracting details that took away from the photo. So I asked that she permit me to scan it so that I could post it in our reunion gallery at Pbase. When I got home, I scanned it and posted it here.

I am continually amazed at the fact that you never know enough that you don't still have something to learn. For instance, I discovered a setting in my scanner software that enabled me to increase the number of the dpi (dots per inch) setting. Instead of using 300 dpi, I scanned this photo at 600 dpi. That solved a problem that I had had with scanning in general by increasing the resolution of the resulting picture. My previous efforts with the scanner were less than satisfactory because they were just such low resolution. The down side of scanning at a higher resolution is that it produces very large files, but that I can live with because I can, depending upon the use to which I plan to put the scan, alter the size once I have the photo digitized.

I also learned that I can acquire the scan through Photoshop and don't have to use the scanner software that came with the scanner. That eliminates a step or two because I usually end up importing the scanned image into Photoshop so I can crop and adjust the colors, luminosity and otherwise edit it. These discoveries lead me to want to return to the images that I have scanned previously to see whether I'm able to improve my initial efforts now that I'm armed with these additional insights. No matter how much you know already, there is always something else to learn.
- posted by Perry @ 6:24 AM