An interesting fact about piccies from the camera

[Guest Rob.P]

We all know that the pictures taken with the camera in low light conditions don't come out to well.

I got back from holiday last sunday and had taken a few pictures with the phone, we had a proper camera as I didn't want to rely on the pictures from the phone as they can be a bit hit and miss. Getting them on the PC proved my point, some were a bit dodge.

So I thought what the hell I'll keep them anyway and I burnt them onto a CD using Uleads' DVD Picture Show prog, tested it on my DVD player just out of interest and low and behold the picture quality, even for the lowlight ones, has come out remarkably better then I expect. Better to the point of I'm glad I didn't delete them cause I can actually see what's going on in the pictures now and they are worth keeping.

Just thought I'd share that little bit of info with you. I'm gonna do some more investigation cause obviously Uleads prog does something to the light properties of the pic and also prehaps the gamma through the TV seems to be better than most PC's. If I discover anymore, I shall post it here.

[Guest the.dude]

Interesting note about burning the pics to DVD. Is it possible to burn them onto CD, albiet you would get fewer pics ?? for later viewing via a DVD player ?

[Guest Rob.P]

Sorry should have made myself clearer on that point, I did actually burn them to CD but in VCD format so that my DVD player could read it and any other type of Video Disc Player.

[Guest midnight]

the gamma throuhg the tv isd better than most pc's???? heheh, no chance, unless you have a 10 yr old graphics card.

most vidcards have color/contrast and gamma settings available, and with my gf2 it also came with 'adobe gamma' which sets up the gamma as it should be

but, unless youhave a plasma screen there is no way a tv can compete with a monitor

[Guest midnight]

oh, adobe gamma also comes with photoshop (if youhave photoshop you can also improve the brightness and contrast to improve pictures anyway.

[Guest casper508]

Yeap adobe gamma makes a hell of a difference. Especially in those dark corners in 3d games.

Cas

[Guest Rob.P]

Can't be down to the Gamma then, I have Photoshop and have set-up the Gamma with the prog supplied, so it's gotta be down to something else, will have a look at the documentation for the Ulead prog.

[Guest midnight]

just use photoshop to change the brightness and contrast of the photos

[Guest Rob.P]

I should have said this in my first post, this is by comparison, I have affected the darker pictures with Photoshop but never quite got the picture quality that I did via the DVD picture show. Don't get me wrong I know my way around Photoshop, I use it almost everyday at work, I just found that it was remarkably different going through Ulead's program.

Was curious as to what the differences could be. Unsure about luminense values between TV/DVD and PC's, could be the PAL system that does it unsure at the moment without further investigation. Might run the piccies through the AVID suite and see if NTSC and PAL make any impact on the pictures' qualities.

[Guest madu]

Played same CD on PC?? How does it compare??

[Guest midnight]

actually, adjusting curves in photoshop is the best and quickest way, i'd do a tutorial on this, but it would differ picture to picture

[Guest DJHope]

Itd probably seem better quality on the tv because its at a lower resolution (well in one direction) and as such has a slight blurring effect which may make the pictures SEEM better even though technically they arnt kinda like a blinear filtering technique.

DJ Hope

[Guest fraser]

It could just be because most people have the brightness and contrast on their TV set too high. They do that in the shops to make the models stand out, and most folk think that is how they are meant to be.

If you've ever used a Plunge test pattern to do this, you'll know what I mean! :lol:

[Guest lsuhe]

What is a Plunge test pattern? and where can I find out more or get one.

I've seen one TV (Bush/Hinari) that if you turn it off at the remote it rememberes brightes colour contrast settings. If you turn it off at the set though with the button and turn it back on they all default back to their default values, and black is grey and the contrast is too low and the colours not there. Its on a friends TV andI can't stand seeing the 14:9 borders etc in greey and everyone looking washed out.

Sorry got slightly off topic there!

[Guest Rob.P]

madukrainian> Played same CD on PC and came out same as TV, hence why I think it has something to do with the processes in the conversion.

midnight> Tried through curves but like you said it depends and varies picture to picture. I swear by photoshop, I love it hence why I want to get to the bottom of this so that I can replicate it in Photoshop, hopefully it won't require another plugin but just creating a custom action to batch process.

I'm more inclined to think along the lines of what DJHope is suggesting, I think it has something to do with the upper and lower fields of the TV signal, I think (without reference material) that it will all depend on which field it renders the image on, upper or lower, I can't remember which does what off hand.

[Guest fraser]

I use this DVD for this kind of thing, but it appears to be discontinued. Most recent THX DVDs have a similar thing I think.

A pluge pattern is essentially two squares on a black background, although it is usually part of another set of patterns, e.g. the SMPTE pattern. The way TVs work is that it's possible to get "blacker than black", i.e. the signal level that is defined as "black" is not at the lowest point on the scale. The brightness control sets the colour of black, so if you turn it up, everything dark will be grey.

The idea is that you set it to about 50% then lower it until the darker of the two boxes is the same colour as the background. If you look very very closely at the lower right of the pattern in the dark horizontal rectangle, you'll see two vertical lines. The one on the left is the darker one.

Here's a breakdown of the SMPTE pattern.