I wouldn't call it washed out so much as lacking in contrast. It's hard to judge properly in digital form because everyone's monitor is different, but from what I see on my screen, the photo could stand slightly brighter highlights and quite a bit deeper blacks. The question remains whether this lack of contrast is due to scanning or whether it's on the print. Scanners do tend to do weird things to tonality, and it can be difficult to match scan to print because on the monitor, the image should be viewed in a pitch-dark room, while quite the opposite applies to the print. So in the end, only you can safely judge whether the print has the tonal range that you wanted.
I agree with Sérgio that it's good to scan B&W photos in colour mode, but I don't agree that you should afterwards convert them to greyscale. Insofar as I understand the process, conversion to greyscale compresses the available information into a much smaller set of tones. The other problem with greyscale is that you'll notice that some paper + developer combos give results which, although they are B&W, are very different from the cold, sterile tones of digital greyscale. And I suspect that after uploading to the web, the images get converted to sRGB anyway.
So much for technical talk. Keep shooting & posting & most importantly, having fun!
this one is amazing just the way it is! I love the pureness in the flower and motion that the background inspires. It gives you the feeling you're under whater.
Your scaner problem isn?t only the washed out. For what I know everytime you scan a photo you should compensate the loss in light, contrast and sharpness. Only scanning like velvia slides I don?t have the need to improve the scanning, It doesn?t actually do a thing. I also believe you are scanning your b&w photos in colour, it is good that you scan them like that to preserve the most of the original, but then you should put them in greyscale after editing. I?ve noticed that they still are in RGB.
Well but this one doesn't loose a thing on account of that, it even improves it! I think you should choose B&W Flower under Projects, because this is not an ordinary flower shot.
just a tid bit. Its from your scanner, everyone has that problem, just take it into a photo editing program and do a bit of contrast and brightness, and it should fix it right up. I hate flatbed scaners. Thats what your using to get it posted right? *crosses fingers* :-)
Sweet. I remember the first time devolping my film this semester, it was kinda creepy, cause i thought i was going to screw something up. i didn't... so yay. But yea keep it up. Do you have an image editing program. Cause you scanning your pictures on like a flatbed scanner would make your pictures look really washed out. so if you have an image editing program, do a bit with the contrast and brightness of the picture, and then it should look like your original. Anyway have a good day.
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{K:24381} 5/10/2004