Please suggest best workflow for professional printing

"My View" <reply to > wrote in message

Hi All

I have a jpeg image taken at maximum size (ie minimum compression) on a Canon 300D.

I want to get it professionally printed to an A2 size (Nominal 600 x 400 millimetres).

http://www.fstoponline.com.au/tech_l2.html
Go here for a rundown on applying a printer profile for a commercial lab.

Kiah

"My View" <reply to > wrote in
news:4mOEd.114198$:

I will be enlarging it using Genuine Fractals.

I need to carry out minor image processing with PS CS, including level and saturation adjustments and minor sharpening.

Since you have PSCS, you will almost certainly get better results not using GF.

Also, in the future you will want to use RAW instead of JPEG, 100 ISO simulation on shots you will want to increase hugely.

You apply their color profile first, then make your adjustments – or else you’ll probably have to do it again.

How can I increase the size of the image by using PSCS andnot GF? I am not aware PSCS has the ability to enlarge images without obvious pixelation (if that’s the right terminology).

PeterH

"Eric Gill" wrote in message

"My View" <reply to > wrote in
news:4mOEd.114198$:

I will be enlarging it using Genuine Fractals.

I need to carry out minor image processing with PS CS, including level and saturation adjustments and minor sharpening.

Since you have PSCS, you will almost certainly get better results not using
GF.

Also, in the future you will want to use RAW instead of JPEG, 100 ISO simulation on shots you will want to increase hugely.

You apply their color profile first, then make your adjustments – or else you’ll probably have to do it again.

My View wrote:

How can I increase the size of the image by using PSCS andnot GF? I am not aware PSCS has the ability to enlarge images without obvious pixelation (if that’s the right terminology).

PeterH

You’ll get a variety of responses from the group, some of whom believe in GF, and others who don’t. GF does a better job in certain situations than PS’s built in resampling.

Try both, and pick the one you like the best. Some people recommend upsampling in steps of 10 percent or so. There are additional resampling variants available in CS. Don’t forget to sharpen after you upsample in PS.

In the end this will have more meaning to you than anything that is said here.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

A whole industry exists on Interpolation. It is used every day by tens of thousands of professional labs all over the world, many of whom have laser print labs costing more than $300,000 each. Durst, the Italian equipment maker most famous for their film enlargers and photo printers sell a digital laser printer called a "Lambda" to make photographic prints up to four feet wide, some are twenty feet long. We presently print up to 56" wide and as long as needed with out plotter/printers.

Highly respected print labs, every day, accept image files at 100 ppi (dpi to most people) and return beautiful, continuous tone photographs printed at 400 ppi (dpi). And yet there are still people claiming to be experts, who say bicubic interpolation in 110% steps under Photoshop is/can/will do a better job than the dedicated programs which enlarge digital images and drive these printers. Absolutely amazing!

I can’t help but wonder at how these self styled experts actually got their knowledge. Certainly it could not have been from practical experience or they would know Photoshop cannot even print the very large documents which programs such as Genuine Fractals and similar can produce. The leading edge of Digital enlargement software creates a mixture of vector and raster out of a traditional bitmap and then goes to work on the enlargement. Photoshop is so busy thrashing the hard drives for virtual memory it couldn’t dedicate the processing needed to make even a simple 400% enlargement from a combined image, much less a 1600% one that these programs often create.

So, if you have a spare 20 bucks (US), get the Photoshop action from Fred Miranda’s web site (www.fredmiranda.com)and use the stair interpolation process to massage up your files. With luck you might get 250 or 300% increase with passable results. If you sharpen your images "after you upsample" you will also sharpen the artefacts and the image will further degrade as you attempt to use many of the other rudimentary, often crude tools in Photoshop to clean up the mess left by the earlier one until you too, will joint the shrinking brigade of ‘experts’ who make themselves look so absolutely ridiculous by claiming it (enlarging digital images) can’t be done.

Canon themselves provide information on how to enlarge (interpolate) a Canon digital image on their web site. They (Canon) suggest an unsharp mask of 300% with a radius of 0.3 at zero threshold to overcome the Anti Alias filter in their cameras *before* upsampling. Dedicated enlarging programs (GF is one of them) also do their own sharpening and you can get a Genuine Fractals plugin to use the program as a stand along sharpening application… Oh! blast. You can’t sharpen out of focus images either, can you, Mr Russell?

Kiah MacDonald is my name, Douglas is my father.
Together with my father, mother and brother, we run Technology Australia’s (Techno Aussie’s) digital print centre in South east Queensland. What do we do? We print photographs, posters and wall murals. When my dad returns from his current assignment, he leaves for Europe.

I doubt he’ll bring it back as cabin luggage but he’s going for one purpose only. To buy the largest photo printer and processor currently available. Ask yourself why would he spend $500,000 on a photo printer and maybe the same on the processor if you could not enlarge digital images from today’s DSLRs to or near such proportions? OK… He might be odd. He might be outspoken. He might even be eccentric, but one thing he is not and that is stupid.

Kiah.
——————

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

You’ll get a variety of responses from the group, some of whom believe in GF, and others who don’t. GF does a better job in certain situations than PS’s built in resampling.

Try both, and pick the one you like the best. Some people recommend upsampling in steps of 10 percent or so. There are additional resampling variants available in CS. Don’t forget to sharpen after you upsample in

PS.

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, except for a few points. In particular, if you are saying that people should give more weight to the word of authorities, such as yourself, than to their own findings and experiments, I disagree completely.

I’ll stick with my statement that, for those of us who are not wrapping buildings in our printouts, Photoshop’s bicubic resample, followed by judicious sharpening, is capable of producing a very high quality result, equal to or better than that of third party products.

I can say this with some credibility, having worked in graphics software for quite a few years.
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

One Million Pictures wrote:

A whole industry exists on Interpolation. It is used every day by tens of thousands of professional labs all over the world, many of whom have laser print labs costing more than $300,000 each. Durst, the Italian equipment maker most famous for their film enlargers and photo printers sell a digital laser printer called a "Lambda" to make photographic prints up to four feet wide, some are twenty feet long. We presently print up to 56" wide and as long as needed with out plotter/printers.

Highly respected print labs, every day, accept image files at 100 ppi (dpi to most people) and return beautiful, continuous tone photographs printed at 400 ppi (dpi). And yet there are still people claiming to be experts, who say bicubic interpolation in 110% steps under Photoshop is/can/will do a better job than the dedicated programs which enlarge digital images and drive these printers. Absolutely amazing!

I can’t help but wonder at how these self styled experts actually got their knowledge. Certainly it could not have been from practical experience or they would know Photoshop cannot even print the very large documents which programs such as Genuine Fractals and similar can produce. The leading edge of Digital enlargement software creates a mixture of vector and raster out of a traditional bitmap and then goes to work on the enlargement. Photoshop is so busy thrashing the hard drives for virtual memory it couldn’t dedicate the processing needed to make even a simple 400% enlargement from a combined image, much less a 1600% one that these programs often create.

So, if you have a spare 20 bucks (US), get the Photoshop action from Fred Miranda’s web site (www.fredmiranda.com)and use the stair interpolation process to massage up your files. With luck you might get 250 or 300% increase with passable results. If you sharpen your images "after you upsample" you will also sharpen the artefacts and the image will further degrade as you attempt to use many of the other rudimentary, often crude tools in Photoshop to clean up the mess left by the earlier one until you too, will joint the shrinking brigade of ‘experts’ who make themselves look so absolutely ridiculous by claiming it (enlarging digital images) can’t be done.
Canon themselves provide information on how to enlarge (interpolate) a Canon digital image on their web site. They (Canon) suggest an unsharp mask of 300% with a radius of 0.3 at zero threshold to overcome the Anti Alias filter in their cameras *before* upsampling. Dedicated enlarging programs (GF is one of them) also do their own sharpening and you can get a Genuine Fractals plugin to use the program as a stand along sharpening application… Oh! blast. You can’t sharpen out of focus images either, can you, Mr Russell?
Kiah MacDonald is my name, Douglas is my father.
Together with my father, mother and brother, we run Technology Australia’s (Techno Aussie’s) digital print centre in South east Queensland. What do we do? We print photographs, posters and wall murals. When my dad returns from his current assignment, he leaves for Europe.

I doubt he’ll bring it back as cabin luggage but he’s going for one purpose only. To buy the largest photo printer and processor currently available. Ask yourself why would he spend $500,000 on a photo printer and maybe the same on the processor if you could not enlarge digital images from today’s DSLRs to or near such proportions? OK… He might be odd. He might be outspoken. He might even be eccentric, but one thing he is not and that is stupid.
Kiah.
——————

"Mike Russell" wrote in message

You’ll get a variety of responses from the group, some of whom believe in GF, and others who don’t. GF does a better job in certain situations than PS’s built in resampling.

Try both, and pick the one you like the best. Some people recommend upsampling in steps of 10 percent or so. There are additional resampling variants available in CS. Don’t forget to sharpen after you upsample in PS.

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 10:26:34 GMT, "One Million Pictures" wrote:

I doubt he’ll bring it back as cabin luggage but he’s going for one purpose only. To buy the largest photo printer and processor currently available. Ask yourself why would he spend $500,000 on a photo printer and maybe the same on the processor if you could not enlarge digital images from today’s DSLRs to or near such proportions? OK… He might be odd. He might be outspoken. He might even be eccentric, but one thing he is not and that is stupid.

Then he will know that you *cannot produce detail that isn’t there in the original image*. Sure, you can make things bigger – at the same time you also make any focusing errors bigger and so forth. That’s what the real argument is about – people come here expecting to be able to produce enlargements with refined detail. Not possible.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate wrote:

Then he will know that you *cannot produce detail that isn’t there in the original image*. Sure, you can make things bigger – at the same time you also make any focusing errors bigger and so forth. That’s what the real argument is about – people come here expecting to be able to produce enlargements with refined detail. Not possible.
—

Oh, Hecate…
Do you read what you write before posting?
Enlarging a conventional 35mm negative does all of the above with the exception of detail. 20% of what you had is lost from refraction and diffusion during a 200% enlargement of a colour negative.

I suppose you still cling to "refined detail" as the realm of monochrome devotees, is it? Even the very best of the best condenser enlargers lose 10 to 15% of available detail during a 200% enlargement. Hardly a glowing endorsement for retained detail – much less refined detail, is it?

Kiah

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:10:41 +1000, One Million Pics
wrote:

Hecate wrote:

Then he will know that you *cannot produce detail that isn’t there in the original image*. Sure, you can make things bigger – at the same time you also make any focusing errors bigger and so forth. That’s what the real argument is about – people come here expecting to be able to produce enlargements with refined detail. Not possible.
—

Oh, Hecate…
Do you read what you write before posting?
Enlarging a conventional 35mm negative does all of the above with the exception of detail. 20% of what you had is lost from refraction and diffusion during a 200% enlargement of a colour negative.
I suppose you still cling to "refined detail" as the realm of monochrome devotees, is it? Even the very best of the best condenser enlargers lose 10 to 15% of available detail during a 200% enlargement. Hardly a glowing endorsement for retained detail – much less refined detail, is it?

Exactly where did I mention old tech methods of enlarging? I didn’t. And that’s specifically because we’re talking about interpolation and that’s electronic enlarging. Still, if you want to argue about it, you can’t put in detail that isn’t there if you’#re using a Cold Cathode either. No method of interpolation, traditional or otherwise, will allow you to interpolate something that isn’t there in the first place.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:10:41 +1000

Exactly where did I mention old tech methods of enlarging? I didn’t. And that’s specifically because we’re talking about interpolation and that’s electronic enlarging. Still, if you want to argue about it, you can’t put in detail that isn’t there if you’#re using a Cold Cathode either. No method of interpolation, traditional or otherwise, will allow you to interpolate something that isn’t there in the first place.

—

Interpolation does actually "add something that isn’t there in the first place". The process looks at an array of pixels and ‘guesses’ what neighboring pixels should consist of then adds those pixels in quite the opposite way a JPEG file loses information. The method has been refined in recent times to be remarkably accurate. I just wish the lottery results could be so accurately guessed!

Some of our digital enlargements start from a 6 Mp file at 18 megabytes in Photoshop and end up well over 200 megabytes by the time they are enlarged to 24" x 36" posters.

I conceded that some types of images are more prone to errors than others. A good quality portrait can very easily be blown up 1000% with no visible loss of detail while a photo of swirling water or tree foliage will show signs of data loss at 600% or a little less.

Would you like me to post some examples of interpolated images for your perusal?

Kiah.

One Million Pics wrote:

Interpolation does actually "add something that isn’t there in the first place". The process looks at an array of pixels and ‘guesses’ what neighboring pixels should consist of then adds those pixels in quite the opposite way a JPEG file loses information. The method has been refined in recent times to be remarkably accurate. I just wish the lottery results could be so accurately guessed!

Some of our digital enlargements start from a 6 Mp file at 18 megabytes in Photoshop and end up well over 200 megabytes by the time they are enlarged to 24" x 36" posters.

It’s true that you can blow up 6 Mpixel images that much, but that is not because interpolation really adds something. The only thing interploation does is ‘smooth out jaggies’, that would otherwise become visible. But it doesn’t add any detail.

There is a simple mathematical explanation why you can indeed blow up a 6 Mpixel image to that size. A 6 Mpixel image is 2000 x 3000 pixels. If you print that at 24" x 36" it means that 2000 original pixels are spread out over 24 inch. Presuming that the smallest detail in the original file is one pixel, the smallest detail in the final print becomes 24"/2000 = 610mm/2000 = 0.3 mm. That is still very fine detail, especially because you will be looking at this print from a certain distance. Conclusion: It’s not really the interploation that makes this possible, it’s the original image that does.

I conceded that some types of images are more prone to errors than others. A good quality portrait can very easily be blown up 1000% with no visible loss of detail while a photo of swirling water or tree foliage will show signs of data loss at 600% or a little less.

True, and again easy to explain. A portrait doesn’t really have much very fine detail. The smallest detail is probably the hairs. If you blow up a portrait, anyone will expect those hairs to become bigger, so nobody objects to not seeing any detail smaller than that. With tree foliage on the other hand, you DO expect to see more details when you blow up the picture further. And because interpolation doesn’t really add any details, you start to notice that something is missing, even with the best interpolation software.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

I conceded that some types of images are more prone to errors than others. A good quality portrait can very easily be blown up 1000% with no visible loss of detail while a photo of swirling water or tree foliage will show signs of data loss at 600% or a little less.
Would you like me to post some examples of interpolated images for your perusal?

Kiah.

It’s very, very interesting all this conversation. I’m new in digital photography, and this thread is make me have an idea about image enlargement. This is something I want to do… enlarge some of my images.

Please Kiah can you post some of that examples of interpoleted images? I would like to see in image what you are discussing in the tread.

Anybody knows any good tutorial that explains how to use some of these especialized programs, as Genuine Fractals, that "My View" said?

Sorry for my bad English and thanks in advance.

Shurik

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:57:40 +1000, One Million Pics
wrote:

Hecate wrote:

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 08:10:41 +1000

Exactly where did I mention old tech methods of enlarging? I didn’t. And that’s specifically because we’re talking about interpolation and that’s electronic enlarging. Still, if you want to argue about it, you can’t put in detail that isn’t there if you’#re using a Cold Cathode either. No method of interpolation, traditional or otherwise, will allow you to interpolate something that isn’t there in the first place.

—

Interpolation does actually "add something that isn’t there in the first place". The process looks at an array of pixels and ‘guesses’ what neighboring pixels should consist of then adds those pixels in quite the opposite way a JPEG file loses information. The method has been refined in recent times to be remarkably accurate. I just wish the lottery results could be so accurately guessed!

Oh right. So if I take a picture of a deciduous tree in the winter it’ll add the leaves for me? Wow, that *is* clever…

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

"Hecate" wrote in message

Oh right. So if I take a picture of a deciduous tree in the winter it’ll add the leaves for me? Wow, that *is* clever…

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Well Hecate…
What can I say faced with such a sarcastic outlook?
I know!
Look for yourself.
That might be a start. Although I doubt someone with your fixed attitude could comprehend that an impovished family of rejected Poms laughed out of Oxford for a radical concept and an independent voice could actually find creativity after migrating to the colonies and come up with anything mathematically correct, much less make it work and actually do something with the formula. My Dad did. See for yourself but don’t stop the scarcasm, we wouldn’t like to think after 65 years someone from his mother country actually acknowledged he might have had a clue right from the start.

http://www.tecphoto.com.au/examples.htm

Kiah

One Million Pictures wrote:

"Hecate" wrote in message

Oh right. So if I take a picture of a deciduous tree in the winter it’ll add the leaves for me? Wow, that *is* clever…

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Well Hecate…
What can I say faced with such a sarcastic outlook?
I know!
Look for yourself.
That might be a start. Although I doubt someone with your fixed attitude could comprehend that an impovished family of rejected Poms laughed out of Oxford for a radical concept and an independent voice could actually find creativity after migrating to the colonies and come up with anything mathematically correct, much less make it work and actually do something with the formula. My Dad did. See for yourself but don’t stop the scarcasm, we wouldn’t like to think after 65 years someone from his mother country actually acknowledged he might have had a clue right from the start.
http://www.tecphoto.com.au/examples.htm

Kiah

WOOOWWWWWWWW

I would love to work with you guys hahaha, I mean it, no sarcasm what so ever! That is fantastic. I am gonna check out your website, this totally intrigues me I can tell ya that…….

steg

Hecate wrote:

Oh right. So if I take a picture of a deciduous tree in the winter it’ll add the leaves for me? Wow, that *is* clever…

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

For a few years now I have found myself sharing points of views on PS and photography topics with you but today I disagree with you. The fact is you really can enlarge digital pictures in many ways and fool the human eye.
Software and printer technology makes it possible.
I have enlarged pictures taken by a 1.3 MP camera and printed crisp 8x10s just using Stair Interpolation.
I print large (meter long) pictures at 180 dpi that look as crisp as traditional prints.(OK, not from the 1.3 MP ;-))
If you have a good printer, all I can say is: experiment. You may find that the 300dpi and other "rules" are in fact based on nothing much and that interpolation can work for your images.
Aloha,

Stephan

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

There is a simple mathematical explanation why you can indeed blow up a 6 Mpixel image to that size. A 6 Mpixel image is 2000 x 3000 pixels. If you print that at 24" x 36" it means that 2000 original pixels are spread out over 24 inch. Presuming that the smallest detail in the original file is one pixel, the smallest detail in the final print becomes 24"/2000 = 610mm/2000 = 0.3 mm. That is still very fine detail, especially because you will be looking at this print from a certain distance. Conclusion: It’s not really the interploation that makes this possible, it’s the original image that does.

Mathematics can explain anything Johan. It is the calculus which is often flawed. Your description is also flawed. If what you say is true (which it is not) you could just "stretch" an image to any size and shape the pixels differently.

Reshaping pixels only smooths out an oversize image and adds a degree of "unsharpness" to the picture. Our process is more elaborate than that. An average 600 x 900 mm poster has a minimum (compressed jpeg)file size of 45 megabytes. The original files are anything from 2.3 to 7 megabyte jpegs. The extra data is to add extra detail to the image.

Kiah

One Million Pics wrote:

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

There is a simple mathematical explanation why you can indeed blow up a 6 Mpixel image to that size. A 6 Mpixel image is 2000 x 3000 pixels. If you print that at 24" x 36" it means that 2000 original pixels are spread out over 24 inch. Presuming that the smallest detail in the original file is one pixel, the smallest detail in the final print becomes 24"/2000 = 610mm/2000 = 0.3 mm. That is still very fine detail, especially because you will be looking at this print from a certain distance. Conclusion: It’s not really the interploation that makes this possible, it’s the original image that does.

Mathematics can explain anything Johan. It is the calculus which is often flawed. Your description is also flawed. If what you say is true (which it is not) you could just "stretch" an image to any size and shape the pixels differently.

Reshaping pixels only smooths out an oversize image and adds a degree of "unsharpness" to the picture. Our process is more elaborate than that. An average 600 x 900 mm poster has a minimum (compressed jpeg)file size of 45 megabytes. The original files are anything from 2.3 to 7 megabyte jpegs. The extra data is to add extra detail to the image.

I won’t comment on your process, because I’ve never seen actual results. However, the principle of upsizing is simple. If the smallest detail in the original image is one pixel, the smallest detail in a 1000% blow up will be 10 x 10 pixels. It is true that this detail won’t be very sharply defined with normal interpolation methods, and using your process it may be sharper than using other methods. I don’t dispute that.

However, even your process won’t be able to create detail that wasn’t in the original image in the first place. Let’s take a simple example: Take a photograph that shows some very small text, but because the picture was taken from too far away, this text is absolutely not legible, no matter how much you zoom in. In that case you can upsize this image as much as you want, but the text in the upsized image will still not be legible. The information simply isn’t there, and even the smartest interpolation software can’t make up for that. If you claim I’m wrong, I will post such an image on my website, so you can download it and upsize it. Then you can tell everybody in this group what the text reads. Deal?

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

One Million Pics wrote:

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

There is a simple mathematical explanation why you can indeed blow up a 6 Mpixel image to that size. A 6 Mpixel image is 2000 x 3000 pixels. If you print that at 24" x 36" it means that 2000 original pixels are spread out over 24 inch. Presuming that the smallest detail in the original file is one pixel, the smallest detail in the final print becomes 24"/2000 = 610mm/2000 = 0.3 mm. That is still very fine detail, especially because you will be looking at this print from a certain distance. Conclusion: It’s not really the interploation that makes this possible, it’s the original image that does.

Mathematics can explain anything Johan. It is the calculus which is often flawed. Your description is also flawed. If what you say is true (which it is not) you could just "stretch" an image to any size and shape the pixels differently.

Reshaping pixels only smooths out an oversize image and adds a degree of "unsharpness" to the picture. Our process is more elaborate than that. An average 600 x 900 mm poster has a minimum (compressed jpeg)file size of 45 megabytes. The original files are anything from 2.3 to 7 megabyte jpegs. The extra data is to add extra detail to the image.

I won’t comment on your process, because I’ve never seen actual results. However, the principle of upsizing is simple. If the smallest detail in the original image is one pixel, the smallest detail in a 1000% blow up will be 10 x 10 pixels. It is true that this detail won’t be very sharply defined with normal interpolation methods, and using your process it may be sharper than using other methods. I don’t dispute that.

However, even your process won’t be able to create detail that wasn’t in the original image in the first place. Let’s take a simple example: Take a photograph that shows some very small text, but because the picture was taken from too far away, this text is absolutely not legible, no matter how much you zoom in. In that case you can upsize this image as much as you want, but the text in the upsized image will still not be legible. The information simply isn’t there, and even the smartest interpolation software can’t make up for that. If you claim I’m wrong, I will post such an image on my website, so you can download it and upsize it. Then you can tell everybody in this group what the text reads. Deal?
—
Johan W. Elzenga

hahahaha now that is what it all should be about. I am curious. At the same time I think we are talking semantics here. The key word is "DETAIL". That is used by Kiah in the sense of "sharpening" the picture, while others (like me I must say) regard detail in a photograph more as a part of the picture, more leafs in the tree that were there but the lens missed it, stuff like that.

Enlarging a photo without losing sharpness is more or less doable with interpolation. Adding details is totally in the hand of God. Input is output.

steg

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 23:28:00 GMT, "One Million Pictures" wrote:

"Hecate" wrote in message

Oh right. So if I take a picture of a deciduous tree in the winter it’ll add the leaves for me? Wow, that *is* clever…

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Well Hecate…
What can I say faced with such a sarcastic outlook?
I know!
Look for yourself.
That might be a start. Although I doubt someone with your fixed attitude could comprehend that an impovished family of rejected Poms laughed out of Oxford for a radical concept and an independent voice could actually find creativity after migrating to the colonies and come up with anything mathematically correct, much less make it work and actually do something with the formula. My Dad did. See for yourself but don’t stop the scarcasm, we wouldn’t like to think after 65 years someone from his mother country actually acknowledged he might have had a clue right from the start.

No, it’s just simple physics. Detail that is unrecorded remains unrecorded no matter how much you blow it up. And if you were to remove the outsize chip on your shoulder that is obviously blocking your eyesight you would see that.

You want to really say that you can produce detail when none is there? Show me that picture of the deciduous tree, photographed in winter, but where you’ve managed to conjure up the leaves.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 06:21:55 GMT, Stephan wrote:

Hecate wrote:

Oh right. So if I take a picture of a deciduous tree in the winter it’ll add the leaves for me? Wow, that *is* clever…

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

For a few years now I have found myself sharing points of views on PS and photography topics with you but today I disagree with you. The fact is you really can enlarge digital pictures in many ways and fool the human eye.
Software and printer technology makes it possible.
I have enlarged pictures taken by a 1.3 MP camera and printed crisp 8x10s just using Stair Interpolation.
I print large (meter long) pictures at 180 dpi that look as crisp as traditional prints.(OK, not from the 1.3 MP ;-))
If you have a good printer, all I can say is: experiment. You may find that the 300dpi and other "rules" are in fact based on nothing much and that interpolation can work for your images.
Aloha,

HI Stephan.,

I think you’re missing the point as well. Ort are you now saying that you can produce a detail in an image that wasn’t there when the image was taken as well, because that’s what Kiah is saying.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate wrote:

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 06:21:55 GMT, Stephan wrote:

HI Stephan.,

I think you’re missing the point as well. Ort are you now saying that you can produce a detail in an image that wasn’t there when the image was taken as well, because that’s what Kiah is saying.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

The question is not what Kiah or Stephan are saying but: is extra data in an image file extra detail. If not, then what is it doing in the file. If yes, then Kiah is right, the system adds data to an image and therefore detail.

Perhaps your presumtion that detail is an element of the picture and cannot be added to, could need looking at. If you can remove data from a file and it loses detail, then adding data should add detail, should it not?

JD

HI Stephan.,

I think you’re missing the point as well. Ort are you now saying that you can produce a detail in an image that wasn’t there when the image was taken as well, because that’s what Kiah is saying.

Hi Hecate,
I surely miss something.
What is detail? What are we talking about?
Of course you cannot produce "leaves on a tree in winter" with interpolation.
But you can enlarge a leaf many times and make it look good. Frankly, the physics and mathematics of the whole thing bore me to death. I leave this to the Timos and other guys with too much time on their hands. I produce images, no time nor desire to understand all that. If I can "stretch" a picture, have a smart software fill the gaps between the now far apart "details/pixels" and have the final result look good enough to be sold then I am happy.

Stephan

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

However, even your process won’t be able to create detail that wasn’t in the original image in the first place. Let’s take a simple example: Take a photograph that shows some very small text, but because the picture was taken from too far away, this text is absolutely not legible, no matter how much you zoom in. In that case you can upsize this image as much as you want, but the text in the upsized image will still not be legible. The information simply isn’t there, and even the smartest interpolation software can’t make up for that. If you claim I’m wrong, I will post such an image on my website, so you can download it and upsize it. Then you can tell everybody in this group what the text reads. Deal?

You seem to have lost the plot somewhere between Hecate’s need to add leaves to a picture and the actual science of enlarging an image whilst adding enough detail that you cannot see any loss of detail when the picture increases in size.

If you can comprehend that a group of pixels of varying colours can represent a visible image, you might also comprehend that adding pixels of similar colour (adding more detail) based on an analysis of the whole image, could also enlarge that image in a way the human eye would think looks the same as the (smaller) original one.

Somehow whenever a discussion about interpolation and digital image enlarging get going, there are those who (presumably) have no grounding in math and cannot comprehend the process. Sadly they begin to introduce absurd and ridiculous statements and questions in the hope of throwing the situation into a round of stupid discussion that has no purpose other than to conceal the ignorance of those who make those posts and attempt to discredit the process.

When we enlarge an image it cannot provide any more resolution than the original image had. Our process does however add detail to the image based on what was originally available so that no visible detail is lost in the larger picture. If we were to simply resize the image without adding detail, it would eventually reach the point of being a lot of multi coloured squares that only formed an image if you moved back far enough for them to blend in the mind’s eye.

I will happily engage in any discussion centered around the quality of our prints enlarged from relatively small digital images. I’ll even discuss (to a point) the mathematics behind the process and offer others advise on how to get better results from their work. I absolutely will not engage in ploys by people like you and Hecate attempting to discredit a proven and widely used process we have refined even further.

It is enough for you to voice your opinion that you have no knowledge of the process and therefore cannot comment on it or can’t understand how it works. To attempt to deride those who do, is just demonstrating your ignorance, maybe even arrogance.

When you (or anyone else who cannot understand the process), cynically and sarcasticly proceed to make outrageous claims that I or one of my family even suggest we can add elements of a picture where those elements never existed is distorting the conversation past where I will participate.

Hecate, I will humor and not just because she is female. You I will not. You know better and choose to go ahead anyway. The mark of a true antagonist. Do you seriously think for one moment anyone would believe it possible or for that matter I would attempt to make sense out of a deliberately blurred image created with the sole purpose of discrediting mine and my father’s work? Move on Johan you have no purpose here.

Kiah.

One Million Pics wrote:

Hecate, I will humor and not just because she is female. You I will not. You know better and choose to go ahead anyway. The mark of a true antagonist. Do you seriously think for one moment anyone would believe it possible or for that matter I would attempt to make sense out of a deliberately blurred image created with the sole purpose of discrediting mine and my father’s work? Move on Johan you have no purpose here.
Kiah.

I believe Johan deserves more credit than that Kiah. There is no need in kicking around because there is a discussion going on. Based on some misunderstandings I believe.

It is about the definition of the word "detail".

Option 1. Detail is determined by the amount of elements seen in the photo. Where there are no leaves one can not add leaves (other than in a manually editing way).

Option 2. Detail is what the human eye sees as "sharpness". I know that is not completely correct, but just for the discussion. Interpolation adds pixels in a more than random way, to make sure the blow-up looks as accurate as possible compared to the original. No elemets are added, just pixels to keep the photo as sharp for the human eye as possible.

I believe that is the misunderstanding. Kiah is trying to make clear he is talking about the second definition of "detail", the others are talking about the first. While I think saying: "woow that picture shows a lot of detail" is more or less saying "woow that is a sharp picture".

steg

James Douglas wrote:

is extra data in an image file extra detail.

"detail: vt. [Fr. detailler, to cut up, tell in particulars < de- (L. de-), from + tailler, to cut] […]!

"detail: n., [Fr détail < v.] […]
3. any of the small parts that got to make up something; item; particular [the details of a plan] 4. a) small secondary or accessor part or parts of a picture, statue, building, etc. […]" (Webster)

When dealing with image information, most people would define "detail" as a mixture of the above definitions 3 and 4a — "detail" in an image is what fine elements *of reality are visible in the image* (reproduction).
Although "pixel" is an acronym for "Picture Element", no one would count pixels as image details, for if all of a given number of pixels were the same colour, one could not exactly speak of them reproducing image *details*, could one?

Extra *detail* may (and probably will) require extra pixels, but extra pixels don’t necessarily mean extra detail.

If not, then what is it doing in the file.
If yes, then Kiah is right, the system adds data to an image and therefore detail.

Extra pixels are extra image *information* — but whether this additional information adds to the *level of detail* is a wholly different matter.

To some extent, perception is deception.

The human eye has a given resolution threshold, i.e., it can distinguish elements of a given size, but smaller ones blend into something different (the whole concept of rasterized offset printing is based upon this effect).
The human brain will interpret things the human eye sees based upon prior experiences and knowledge gained over time — a thing like

XXX
X X
X X
X X
XXX

(use a non-proportional font!)

will be interpreted as a circle even if the eye *sees* that it isn’t round — and more so as the elements of the "circle" are getting closer to the human eye’s resolution threshold.

Adding information (=pixels) to an image can result in repetitive information, i.e., many additional pixels describing the same object in the very same way.

If you can remove data from a file and it loses detail,
then adding data should add detail, should it not?

Ah, but…
Much of the data in a file is redundant, i.e., many pixels contain the very same information, just for a different position in the image.

What you can do is to find an algorithm that replaces

"pixel" "pixel" "pixel" "pixel" "pixel" "pixel" "pixel"

with

"pixel times seven"

and you’ve reduced the amount of data *without losing information* — the above principle is true for any non-lossy image compression (LZW and the like)

If, however your base your algorithm on something like "these pixels are so similar, if we just use an average, no one will spot the difference" basis, then you’ve invented JPEG (yes, I know, I’m oversimplifying!).
In this case, reducing the amount of *data* also reduces the information contained.

You see, reducing data doesn’t mean reducing information (nor image detail), so the assumption of your conclusion above is false to start with (ex falso verum non sequitur, as anyone who has dealt with formal logic knows).

On the other hand, adding *data* to an image does nothing but add *data* to an image — the process doesn’t know whether there would be this or that or another pixel in a given spot *if* the original image had been taken at twice the resolution to start with.
All such a process can do is to make a more or less "algorithm-based educated guess" at what the "add.pix.No.27438" *could* have been. What it *can’t* do is adding *actual* image detail in the sense of the above definition.
There is no denying that some programs are better than others at interpolating the new data from the existing, but if anything they can at best achieve an approximation to reality (and more often than not, that approximation isn’t very much in the proximity of reality, either).

In short:
No process — however elaborate — is able to add *real* visual detail to an image that wasn’t there from the beginning.
Many processes are able to interpolate additional information from the existing information that allows to enlarge an image electronically without degrading to such a degree that the lack of additional detail becomes very obvious under normal circumstances.

Helmut
—
All typos © My Knotty Fingers Ltd. Capacity Dept.

steggy wrote:

Hecate, I will humor and not just because she is female. You I will not. You know better and choose to go ahead anyway. The mark of a true antagonist. Do you seriously think for one moment anyone would believe it possible or for that matter I would attempt to make sense out of a deliberately blurred image created with the sole purpose of discrediting mine and my father’s work? Move on Johan you have no purpose here.
Kiah.

I believe Johan deserves more credit than that Kiah. There is no need in kicking around because there is a discussion going on. Based on some misunderstandings I believe.

It is about the definition of the word "detail".
Option 1. Detail is determined by the amount of elements seen in the photo. Where there are no leaves one can not add leaves (other than in a manually editing way).

Option 2. Detail is what the human eye sees as "sharpness". I know that is not completely correct, but just for the discussion. Interpolation adds pixels in a more than random way, to make sure the blow-up looks as accurate as possible compared to the original. No elemets are added, just pixels to keep the photo as sharp for the human eye as possible.
I believe that is the misunderstanding. Kiah is trying to make clear he is talking about the second definition of "detail", the others are talking about the first. While I think saying: "woow that picture shows a lot of detail" is more or less saying "woow that is a sharp picture".

Exactly, that’s what I’m saying all along. The software Kiah is talking about could possibly upsize an image and keep it very sharp. As I said earlier, I have no comments on that because I cannot have any comments. I’ve never seen actual results. Do I believe it’s possible? Yes, I do.

However, sharpness is not the same as detail. Detail is option 1, sharpness is option 2. Detail cannot be created by interpolation, but sharpness can indeeed be kept. Kiah is talking about ‘adding detail’. That is nonsense. If he would say "keeping the image sharp" he would not get any further comments from me.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

steggy wrote:

Hecate, I will humor and not just because she is female. You I will not. You know better and choose to go ahead anyway. The mark of a true antagonist. Do you seriously think for one moment anyone would believe it possible or for that matter I would attempt to make sense out of a deliberately blurred image created with the sole purpose of discrediting mine and my father’s work? Move on Johan you have no purpose here.
Kiah.

I believe Johan deserves more credit than that Kiah. There is no need in kicking around because there is a discussion going on. Based on some misunderstandings I believe.

It is about the definition of the word "detail".
Option 1. Detail is determined by the amount of elements seen in the photo. Where there are no leaves one can not add leaves (other than in a manually editing way).

Option 2. Detail is what the human eye sees as "sharpness". I know that is not completely correct, but just for the discussion. Interpolation adds pixels in a more than random way, to make sure the blow-up looks as accurate as possible compared to the original. No elemets are added, just pixels to keep the photo as sharp for the human eye as possible.
I believe that is the misunderstanding. Kiah is trying to make clear he is talking about the second definition of "detail", the others are talking about the first. While I think saying: "woow that picture shows a lot of detail" is more or less saying "woow that is a sharp picture".

Exactly, that’s what I’m saying all along. The software Kiah is talking about could possibly upsize an image and keep it very sharp. As I said earlier, I have no comments on that because I cannot have any comments. I’ve never seen actual results. Do I believe it’s possible? Yes, I do.
However, sharpness is not the same as detail. Detail is option 1, sharpness is option 2. Detail cannot be created by interpolation, but sharpness can indeeed be kept. Kiah is talking about ‘adding detail’. That is nonsense. If he would say "keeping the image sharp" he would not get any further comments from me.

—
Johan W. Elzenga

And I think that covers it all up:))

Could it be a linguistic thing?
For Kiah: both Johan and I are Dutch, and we use the word detail also, as a Dutch word. Not sure how photographers in both linguistic environments deal with that.

steg

One Million Pics wrote:

You seem to have lost the plot somewhere between Hecate’s need to add leaves to a picture and the actual science of enlarging an image whilst adding enough detail that you cannot see any loss of detail when the picture increases in size.

You are talking about ‘detail’, where you mean ‘sharpness’. That’s quite something else. I’ve already said that I *do* accept that your software may keep the image sharper than other software does. Since you have never posted any proof, I can’t dispute what you are saying.

When we enlarge an image it cannot provide any more resolution than the original image had.

OK, we finally agree.

Our process does however add detail to the image based on what was originally available so that no visible detail is lost in the larger picture.

Your process adds pixels and keeps sharpness, it does not add detail. "Not loosing detail" is not the same as "adding detail". If I do not loose any money when playing in the casino, I won’t get rich.

Hecate, I will humor and not just because she is female. You I will not. You know better and choose to go ahead anyway. The mark of a true antagonist. Do you seriously think for one moment anyone would believe it possible or for that matter I would attempt to make sense out of a deliberately blurred image created with the sole purpose of discrediting mine and my father’s work?

Interesting that you are so certain I would deliberatly blur the image. Does that mean you do claim you can make ilegible text legible again by interpolation, just as long as the original image is not deliberatly blurred? In that case, there is a simple solution to your mistrust. Others in this group, who are not ‘trying to discredit you and your father’ could be the impartial judges. They can also download the image to check that it is as sharp as it can possibly be and not deliberatly blurred. If they confirm it’s not "created with the sole purpose of discrediting mine and my father’s work", would you accept the challenge? Would you accept it if someone else posted an image?

Move on Johan you have no purpose here.

Unfortunately for you, that’s not for you to decide.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

James Douglas wrote:

The question is not what Kiah or Stephan are saying but: is extra data in an image file extra detail. If not, then what is it doing in the file. If yes, then Kiah is right, the system adds data to an image and therefore detail.

Perhaps your presumtion that detail is an element of the picture and cannot be added to, could need looking at. If you can remove data from a file and it loses detail, then adding data should add detail, should it not?

It should, but it won’t because there is no way the software can know this detail. Yes, it can make an assumption, but that assumption is based on the detail that remains, not on the detail that was lost. It’s just that: an assumption.

Compare it with JPEG compression. If you save the image, the file is compressed and detail is lost. If you open the image, the file gets uncompressed, but the original data is still lost. Yes, the eye may be fooled into thinking that the image is identical to the original one, but careful inspection will show you it’s not.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

Stephan wrote:

I think you’re missing the point as well. Ort are you now saying that you can produce a detail in an image that wasn’t there when the image was taken as well, because that’s what Kiah is saying.

Hi Hecate,
I surely miss something.
What is detail? What are we talking about?
Of course you cannot produce "leaves on a tree in winter" with interpolation.
But you can enlarge a leaf many times and make it look good.

I agree that ‘the leafs in the winter’ is a bad example. Here’s a better example: Trees have big branches, small branches and twigs. A 4 Mpixel photograph shows the big branches and the small branches, but not the twigs. Interpolate this image to 16 Mpixels and you still only see the branches, because there is no way the software can know where the twigs should be added and where not. Make a picture with a true 16 Mpixel camera and you do see the twigs as well.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

Stephan wrote:

I think you’re missing the point as well. Ort are you now saying that you can produce a detail in an image that wasn’t there when the image was taken as well, because that’s what Kiah is saying.

Hi Hecate,
I surely miss something.
What is detail? What are we talking about?
Of course you cannot produce "leaves on a tree in winter" with interpolation.
But you can enlarge a leaf many times and make it look good.

I agree that ‘the leafs in the winter’ is a bad example. Here’s a better example: Trees have big branches, small branches and twigs. A 4 Mpixel photograph shows the big branches and the small branches, but not the twigs. Interpolate this image to 16 Mpixels and you still only see the branches, because there is no way the software can know where the twigs should be added and where not. Make a picture with a true 16 Mpixel camera and you do see the twigs as well.

Uhhhhhhhhh detail…….elements (like twigs)…….or sharpness.

That is the question.

steg

steggy wrote:

I agree that ‘the leafs in the winter’ is a bad example. Here’s a better example: Trees have big branches, small branches and twigs. A 4 Mpixel photograph shows the big branches and the small branches, but not the twigs. Interpolate this image to 16 Mpixels and you still only see the branches, because there is no way the software can know where the twigs should be added and where not. Make a picture with a true 16 Mpixel camera and you do see the twigs as well.

Uhhhhhhhhh detail…….elements (like twigs)…….or sharpness.
That is the question.

Not to me, it isn’t. To a photographer, detail is elements like the twigs. Sharpness is …uhhh…. sharpness.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

Unfortunately for you, that’s not for you to decide.

There are a few points here to clear up.

Firstly, I am female. When you refer to me as "he" you are presuming me to be one of you. I guess that is the male thing, to think a female with a clue is actually a male. Not to worry, you’ll get over it or learn to live the idea. My math teacher was a male and he couldn’t accept a female mathematician either.

The second is that I am guilty of presumption too. Perhaps the language differences are responsible for Johan’s interpretation of detail. This is not my problem. This is an English language discussion group. If you can’t cook, you have no place in a kitchen.

I prefer to assume Johan has excellent English comprehension and grasped the chance to gain some support for his negative attitude towards the subject by going along with Hecate’s misunderstanding and using it for his own purpose.

Johan has engaged in negative discussions about enlarging digital images in the past whenever the subject of interpolation is raised. In particular, he and Mike Russell sought to discredit my father’s claim last year in this very group, that it could be done at all, much less at the professional quality we now do it so I am naturally defensive in any discussion with him or Mr Russell where there is the possibility he/they might be pursuing the same course.

FWIW. I see no point at all in discussing the description of a word further. A handful of people in an industry loaded with controversy which has mostly been generated by people like Johan who are unwilling to see the trees for the forest and can’t quite grasp the notion that to maintain resolution and sharpness in a digital image whilst dramatically increasing it’s size, requires addition of detail. This is not as Hecate suggested, adding elements (leaves) which are not there in the first place.

As a last note, The process we have developed is derived from original ideas and several patents belonging to my father (Douglas MacDonald)and myself. I think it is therefore reasonable to presume that the lawyers who produced the patent documentation which Government subsequently approved and granted patents on, knew what they were doing when they defined to process of "adding detail to an image so it may be increased in size with no loss of resolution".

Whatever Johan, Hecate and anyone else may choose to think, my statement that Interpolation adds detail to an image is a legally qualified (English language) description of the process. Alter you own definition, don’t try to force your interpretation of a word on the rest of the world.

Kiah

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

steggy wrote:

I agree that ‘the leafs in the winter’ is a bad example. Here’s a better example: Trees have big branches, small branches and twigs. A 4 Mpixel photograph shows the big branches and the small branches, but not the twigs. Interpolate this image to 16 Mpixels and you still only see the branches, because there is no way the software can know where the twigs should be added and where not. Make a picture with a true 16 Mpixel camera and you do see the twigs as well.

Uhhhhhhhhh detail…….elements (like twigs)…….or sharpness.
That is the question.

Not to me, it isn’t. To a photographer, detail is elements like the twigs. Sharpness is …uhhh…. sharpness.

—
Johan W. Elzenga

OK Johan there we go then……….I thought that would be your reaction, being a photographer. For Kiah (and me I must add) it is sharpness. Nothing wrong with that, but that is the whole cause of the debate. We are getting close here to a clash between photographers and photoshop (read: computer) users:)

steg

steggy wrote:

Not to me, it isn’t. To a photographer, detail is elements like the twigs. Sharpness is …uhhh…. sharpness.

—
Johan W. Elzenga

OK Johan there we go then……….I thought that would be your reaction, being a photographer. For Kiah (and me I must add) it is sharpness. Nothing wrong with that, but that is the whole cause of the debate. We are getting close here to a clash between photographers and photoshop (read: computer) users:)

So, point me to any dictionary that says that ‘detail’ is a synonyme for ‘sharpness’.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

One Million Pics wrote:

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

Unfortunately for you, that’s not for you to decide.

Whatever Johan, Hecate and anyone else may choose to think, my statement that Interpolation adds detail to an image is a legally qualified (English language) description of the process. Alter you own definition, don’t try to force your interpretation of a word on the rest of the world.
Kiah

Kiah, I do not give one piece of "…." whether you are a guy or a lady. And I do not care how you and your dad are making a revolution in this world. But you could lower down your tone. I am sure English speaking photographers could tell you that for them "detail" means something else also. I am Dutch, but with a recent American background. I am sure American photographers mean something more than sharpness if they talk about detail in a pic.

Now, at the same time I am sure you (and your dad) are giving quality by enabling pictures to blow up without too much loss of sharpness, detail……….but hell, that is no reason to come steaming here everytime. Australia is too far away to get customers from this group anyway.

You are right!! And so is Hecate and so is Johan. And that is legally qualified in the Declaration of Human Rights. Period.

steg (and his dad)

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

steggy wrote:

Not to me, it isn’t. To a photographer, detail is elements like the twigs. Sharpness is …uhhh…. sharpness.

—
Johan W. Elzenga

OK Johan there we go then……….I thought that would be your reaction, being a photographer. For Kiah (and me I must add) it is sharpness. Nothing wrong with that, but that is the whole cause of the debate. We are getting close here to a clash between photographers and photoshop (read: computer) users:)

So, point me to any dictionary that says that ‘detail’ is a synonyme for ‘sharpness’.

—
Johan W. Elzenga

It is not as such.
But again, if someone tells me there is a lot of detail in my picture, it most of the time is a reference to sharpness.

steg

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:36:20 +1000, One Million Pics
wrote:

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

Unfortunately for you, that’s not for you to decide.

There are a few points here to clear up.

Firstly, I am female. When you refer to me as "he" you are presuming me to be one of you. I guess that is the male thing, to think a female with a clue is actually a male.

I guess that is the female thing, to universally label "all men as thinking the same thing"

shame on you

One Million Pics wrote:

There are a few points here to clear up.

Firstly, I am female. When you refer to me as "he" you are presuming me to be one of you.

Huh? I’ve never refered to you in the third person. Are you blond too, by any chance? 😉

Johan has engaged in negative discussions about enlarging digital images in the past whenever the subject of interpolation is raised. In particular, he and Mike Russell sought to discredit my father’s claim last year in this very group, that it could be done at all, much less at the professional quality we now do it so I am naturally defensive in any discussion with him or Mr Russell where there is the possibility he/they might be pursuing the same course.

Aha! I should have known. You’re the daugther of the ICC profile expert of Technoaussie!

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

steggy wrote:

But again, if someone tells me there is a lot of detail in my picture, it most of the time is a reference to sharpness.

Yes, but indirectly. If there is a lot of visible detail in your image, it must be pretty sharp (otherwise you won’t see that detail). But sharpness and detail are not the same. An image can be very sharp without having lots of detail.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

steggy wrote:

But again, if someone tells me there is a lot of detail in my picture, it most of the time is a reference to sharpness.

Yes, but indirectly. If there is a lot of visible detail in your image, it must be pretty sharp (otherwise you won’t see that detail). But sharpness and detail are not the same. An image can be very sharp without having lots of detail.

—
Johan W. Elzenga

semantics

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:25:15 +1000, One Million Pics
wrote:

Hecate, I will humor and not just because she is female. You I will not. You know better and choose to go ahead anyway. The mark of a true antagonist. Do you seriously think for one moment anyone would believe it possible or for that matter I would attempt to make sense out of a deliberately blurred image created with the sole purpose of discrediting mine and my father’s work? Move on Johan you have no purpose here.

How kind, you’re humouring me.

Let me humour you now.

You talk of adding more detail You cannot add detail that is not there in the first place. Hence my description of adding leaves that weren’t there to trees that do not have them.

What you can do, and I have no problem with accepting that you have a method to do so, is make an enlargement where you have managed to smooth *the detail that is already in the picture* to achieve a reasonable sharpness form the enlargement. People have been making enlargement for approximately a century now, so your method is only original in that (you claim) you have achieved greater levels of sharpness. That’s all. It isn’t rocket science, it’s just a better enlargement.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 06:36:20 +1000, One Million Pics
wrote:

Whatever Johan, Hecate and anyone else may choose to think, my statement that Interpolation adds detail to an image is a legally qualified (English language) description of the process. Alter you own definition, don’t try to force your interpretation of a word on the rest of the world.

Kiah, for what it’s worth, I’m British and I understand the word detail in exactly the same way.

A detail in an image is not "smoothness" or sharpening" or anything else as nebulous. It is a recorded *detail* such as the feather on a bird, the limb of a tree, whatever. And I don’t any photographer who uses the word detail in any other way when referring to an image.

Misuse of language is apt to cause misunderstanding so I’m, not surprised you are getting people saying "you can’t do that" because you are misusing the word detail.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 12:14:23 +1000, James Douglas
wrote:

The question is not what Kiah or Stephan are saying but: is extra data in an image file extra detail. If not, then what is it doing in the file. If yes, then Kiah is right, the system adds data to an image and therefore detail.

Perhaps your presumtion that detail is an element of the picture and cannot be added to, could need looking at. If you can remove data from a file and it loses detail, then adding data should add detail, should it not?

As I have said in a post which I’ve just sent, no photographer I know uses detail in other sense than to mean a picture element – a leaf, a feather, the glint in a bird’s eye. Consequently, if they are not there in the image in the first place, interpolation is not going to add them.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 04:39:42 GMT, Stephan wrote:

HI Stephan.,

I think you’re missing the point as well. Ort are you now saying that you can produce a detail in an image that wasn’t there when the image was taken as well, because that’s what Kiah is saying.

Hi Hecate,
I surely miss something.
What is detail? What are we talking about?
Of course you cannot produce "leaves on a tree in winter" with interpolation.
But you can enlarge a leaf many times and make it look good. Frankly, the physics and mathematics of the whole thing bore me to death. I leave this to the Timos and other guys with too much time on their hands. I produce images, no time nor desire to understand all that. If I can "stretch" a picture, have a smart software fill the gaps between the now far apart "details/pixels" and have the final result look good enough to be sold then I am happy.

It seems what we’re talking about is semantics. I use the word detail, as does every other photographer I know, to mean a picture element in an image. If that element isn’t there in the first place you can’t add it by interpolation.

A superior form of enlargement, which is what Kiah is describing is just that, a superior form of enlargement. It isn’t magic.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate wrote:

It seems what we’re talking about is semantics. I use the word detail, as does every other photographer I know, to mean a picture element in an image. If that element isn’t there in the first place you can’t add it by interpolation.

A superior form of enlargement, which is what Kiah is describing is just that, a superior form of enlargement. It isn’t magic.
—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

This is all very stupid. I suspect it has more to do with the ego of some people not wishing to concede that Kiah’s description is as valid as there’s is. One fellow attempted to define detail. Another say no, detail is something else. Along comes someone else and says detail is not sharpness.

For my input, a highly detail image has to be a sharp one although a sharp image does not necessarily need to be a detailed one. Having said that, if I were to add detail to an image otherwise lacking, I would expect to add detail which could be seen (sharpen or more clearly define existing elements of the image. Maybe increasing contrast would more clearly define the detail, therefore it becomes a component of picture. Detail has been added. Then Kiah comes back and says she add detail to maintain resolution. This I can understand and agree with.

Why can not the Dutch gents just agree that there are as many ways to describe detail in a photograph as there are ways to define a photograph itself? What is the problem here? I for one think it is grand that someone has devised a way to enlarge my photos.

Does it really matter if the detail is perceived or actual? Does it matter also if someone in Holland or Britain expects detail to be more subject matter whilst someone in Australia is content just have detail in their enlargement? For what it is worth, I think you could all take a lesson or two in accepting what you have without questioning if it really does exist. Pedantic Lunatics. Is it a full moon in Holland?

JD

James Douglas wrote:

This is all very stupid. I suspect it has more to do with the ego of some people […] Another say no,
detail is something else. Along comes someone else
and says detail is not sharpness. […]
Why can not the Dutch gents just agree that there are as many ways

to

describe detail in a photograph as there are ways to define a photograph itself?

Your first sentence sums up the above points in your statement quite well.

Language is a means of communication — but to work, it needs that people agree on what they are talking about. And in order to do so, people implicitly or explicitly define the terms they are using. If we are talking about images, we would need to define what we are talking about. The interesting thing is that not only "the Dutch gents" you are referring to, but quite a few people of different language and culture (Britons, Americans, Austrians, and yes, the Dutch) have pointed out to you that "detail" has a certain meaning, and interestingly, they all agree on what that meaning is, regardless of the fact that their native language might not be English. That should be some fodder for thought to you — maybe *your* definition does not correspond to what everybody else agrees upon?

For my input, a highly detail image has to be a sharp one although a sharp image does not necessarily need to be a detailed one.

Now we are getting closer: This statement of yours clearly distinguishes between sharpness and detail. If you can distinguish between two terms, then they can’t refer to the very same thing. They might be similar, they may describe two matters that are closely related in one way or the other, but if you can distinguish between them, they are not 100% synonymous.

Maybe increasing contrast would more clearly define
the detail, therefore it becomes a
component of picture. Detail has been added.

To more clearly define something, you must *have* it in the first place.
Any kind of sharpening may *bring out* the detail available in the picture, but no sharpening in the world can *introduce* detail that is not there to be sharpened.

Then Kiah comes back and
says she add detail to maintain resolution.
This I can understand and agree with.

Thsi snetnece no vreb has in postion hte rigth but typos mnay — and yet you can understand it. The fact that you (and everybody else) can *understand* the meaning of what Kiah tries to say does not imply that what she says is terminologically correct. And that’s all this discussion is about:

If we were talking about a different matter and I’d come up with the "faucet dance", you might be able to understand me, but I’m sure you’d point out that what I meant was "tap dance", and that regardless of "water tap" and "water faucet" being synonymous, "tap" is the correct term to use in a dance context.
If I were going to be offended by that revelation, would you care to defend me? No, you would tell me that I’d be better off using correct terms if I want people to appreciate my art.

Quite a few people have pointed out that "detail" is the wrong term to use in this context. Not more, not less. It is about as correct as using "dots per inch" when referring to the process of scanning — namely, wrong. And yet everybody understands what the person using "dots per inch" means, and more often than not someone will point out that the correct term for what the scanner takes would be "samples per inch".

The fact that no process in the world can introduce *detail* into an image that wasn’t there to start with detracts *nothing* from the quality of the interpolation used and from the quality and sharpness and crispiness and whatever such a process can produce with the enlargement in question. Sharpness and crispiness and
lack-of-jaggies-ness and the like may contribute to the quality of *perception* of details, but they are not the details. It’s as easy as that.

Helmut
—
All typos © My Knotty Fingers Ltd. Capacity Dept.

Helmut P. Einfalt wrote:

Quite a few people have pointed out that "detail" is the wrong term to use in this context. Not more, not less. It is about as correct as using "dots per inch" when referring to the process of scanning — namely, wrong. And yet everybody understands what the person using "dots per inch" means, and more often than not someone will point out that the correct term for what the scanner takes would be "samples per inch".

Helmut

Interesting interpretation of English Helmut.
Clearly students of a language know more about it’s correctness than users of bastardised versions of it. English as it is spoken can have various inflections and meanings to identical words, depending on the geographical location of the speaker. Of course you already know this.

Australian is a very heavily bastardised mangle of British, American and convict English moulded by a local dialect known as ‘strine’. Living as I do in the same country as Kiah, I understand entirely her description. I do not actually agree with all you say about correctness of a description although I recognise your knowledge of linguistic correctness.

Language (particularly English) is a work in progress. No one would understand someone speaking 16th Century English, it has evolved that much. Barely 12 years ago it was claimed computer programmers had chosen to illegally alter, a traditional method of describing typefaces without the approval of anyone using those descriptions. Nothing illegal happened. Blaspamy was one utterance from an Industry stalwart. Yet here we are today happily using fonts as if they really were typefaces.

The thing you and "Quite a few people" neglected to say was ‘in their/your opinion’ detail was the wrong term to use. I asked quite a few photographers today (in Australia) what they thought of detail as Kiah described it. They all agreed that adding detail to an image whilst enlarging it was the only way to maintain the image’s resolution.

Now I have a question. This is an English speaking group yet there seems to be a significant number of posts to this thread from people who have acquired English as an addition to their native tongue. It is these people who are most vocal in the use of detail (apart from Hecate). My question is, where is this newsgroup, geographically speaking? I know it’s on my ISP’s server but it would seem to be in a strange land from the posts I’ve just read.

JD

James Douglas wrote:

Now I have a question. This is an English speaking group yet there seems to be a significant number of posts to this thread from people who have acquired English as an addition to their native tongue.

….or as one of several languages they speak with equal ease.

My question is, where is this newsgroup, geographically
speaking? I know it’s on my ISP’s server but it would seem to be in a strange land from the posts I’ve just read.

Are you *seriously* asking that? You aren’t trying to pull our legs, by any chance, are you? Well, I’ll answer your question all the same:

This newsgroup, geographically speaking, is residing nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Geographically speaking, its home is called "cyberspace", or, more precisely "usenet". This newsgroup — like all other groups on usenet — is hosted simultaneously by a huge number of news servers all over the world that exchange their information over a global network. Anything you post or I post or anyone else posts, is broadcast from the nearest news server to all other news servers, and any answer that may be fed through a completely different news server will be broadcast from that one to all others, and so forth. There may be a delay of a few seconds to a few minutes before all servers are updated, but for all practical purposes one may say that anything posted on the usenet will be available to all other usenet users nearly instantly.

But that hasn’t anything to do with the terminology in question.

The thing you and "Quite a few people" neglected to say was ‘in their/your opinion’ detail was the wrong term to use.

Have you ever heard of things like encyclopedias and dictionaries? The first works of this kind were published by authors who collected information about terms and tried to describe these terms’ meanings in a concise manner based upon a wealth of sources, sources that they evaluated and condensed into definitions that are not their own doing but rather the gist of the general use of the terms defined. A little further up in this thread I’ve quoted a definition of "detail" from Webster’s New World Dictionary — an American dictionary –, and nothing in there suggests that "detail" were an equivalent to (and let alone synonym of) "resolution" or "sharpness" or the like.

But we shall unite to write a petition to the editors of all English dictionaries in the world, asking them to add something to the next edition of their respective works:
"detail: […] 74. Australian SYN. for ‘sharpness’ and ‘resolution’"…

*ggg*

Helmut
—
All typos © My Knotty Fingers Ltd. Capacity Dept.

In article ,
says…

Hi All ,

I do not really have any place jumping in here but I found the thread so fascinating.

I missed the beginning..would someone be so kind as to bring me up to speed on where this started.

Reshaping pixels only smooths out an oversize image and adds a degree of "unsharpness" to the picture. Our process is more elaborate than that. An average 600 x 900 mm poster has a minimum (compressed jpeg)file size of 45 megabytes. The original files are anything from 2.3 to 7 megabyte jpegs. The extra data is to add extra detail to the image.
Kiah

Hi Kiah ,

Where do I find out more about the way your process works ? my mail works….. (¿)

Thanks

As far as adding data…..if one had an intelligent enough algorithm could it be possible to " fill in the dots " ie talking about text. If the text was incomplete ie. not enough information , could intelligent software work out what it should be and supply the necessary pixels (dots ) to correctly complete the image element. ?

(instructed interpolation )

I am sure some hi-tech secret agency has got this nailed. !

More work for " Applied Science Fiction "

Best wishes

Chris Moore

James Douglas wrote:

Hecate wrote:

It seems what we’re talking about is semantics. I use the word detail, as does every other photographer I know, to mean a picture element in an image. If that element isn’t there in the first place you can’t add it by interpolation.

A superior form of enlargement, which is what Kiah is describing is just that, a superior form of enlargement. It isn’t magic.
—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

This is all very stupid. I suspect it has more to do with the ego of some people not wishing to concede that Kiah’s description is as valid as there’s is. One fellow attempted to define detail. Another say no, detail is something else. Along comes someone else and says detail is not sharpness.

For my input, a highly detail image has to be a sharp one although a sharp image does not necessarily need to be a detailed one. Having said that, if I were to add detail to an image otherwise lacking, I would expect to add detail which could be seen (sharpen or more clearly define existing elements of the image. Maybe increasing contrast would more clearly define the detail, therefore it becomes a component of picture. Detail has been added. Then Kiah comes back and says she add detail to maintain resolution. This I can understand and agree with.
Why can not the Dutch gents just agree that there are as many ways to describe detail in a photograph as there are ways to define a photograph itself? What is the problem here? I for one think it is grand that someone has devised a way to enlarge my photos.

Does it really matter if the detail is perceived or actual? Does it matter also if someone in Holland or Britain expects detail to be more subject matter whilst someone in Australia is content just have detail in their enlargement? For what it is worth, I think you could all take a lesson or two in accepting what you have without questioning if it really does exist. Pedantic Lunatics. Is it a full moon in Holland?
JD

Dunno what you mean by the Dutch gents, but this Dutchy completely agrees with you and has said so several times.

steg

Chris Moore wrote:

In article ,
says…

Hi All ,

I do not really have any place jumping in here but I found the thread so fascinating.

I missed the beginning..would someone be so kind as to bring me up to speed on where this started.

http://tinyurl.com/65ccm

steg

steggy wrote:

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

steggy wrote:

But again, if someone tells me there is a lot of detail in my picture, it most of the time is a reference to sharpness.

Yes, but indirectly. If there is a lot of visible detail in your image, it must be pretty sharp (otherwise you won’t see that detail). But sharpness and detail are not the same. An image can be very sharp without having lots of detail.

—
Johan W. Elzenga

semantics

And that’s why we have dictionaries.

That’s my final answer. This discussion has gone on far too long as far as I’m concerned.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

steggy wrote:

James Douglas wrote:

Hecate wrote:

Add infinitum wrote:

So.
Now are we all in agreement?
Yes?
Good!
Let’s get on with our lives.
At least 700,000 new butterflies were born and probably about 900.000.000 new flowers bloomed while we all argued if adding "dots between dots" (as one person put it) is adding detail or not.

So who actually photographed those wonderful events? Anyone? No?

Oh well, the world goes on and one good thing about ‘the world’ is that when we pass on, it will still go on.

One thing I have gained from this thread is the knowledge that there are people in this world who know so much more about the only language I speak than I do, that I wonder if they see a sentence in the same way I see a formula.

They must or they would not know instinctively that it was absolutely right or absolutely wrong. The only flaw in that, is that no one and no thing is ever absolutely right or wrong!

Cheers for now,
Dad came back last night so today I go back to my babies. I enjoy running the business but I’m glad I don’t do it full time! It’s been an interesting thread indeed. Good wishes to you all.

Kiah

One Million Pics wrote:

So.
Now are we all in agreement?
Yes?
Good!
Let’s get on with our lives.
At least 700,000 new butterflies were born and probably about 900.000.000 new flowers bloomed while we all argued if adding "dots between dots" (as one person put it) is adding detail or not.
So who actually photographed those wonderful events? Anyone? No?

It’s winter in my part of the world. No flowers or butterflies here. That’s why I had time to discuss pixels. 😉

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

One Million Pics wrote:

steggy wrote:

James Douglas wrote:

Hecate wrote:

Add infinitum wrote:

So.
Now are we all in agreement?
Yes?
Good!
Let’s get on with our lives.
At least 700,000 new butterflies were born and probably about 900.000.000 new flowers bloomed while we all argued if adding "dots between dots" (as one person put it) is adding detail or not.
So who actually photographed those wonderful events? Anyone? No?
Oh well, the world goes on and one good thing about ‘the world’ is that when we pass on, it will still go on.

One thing I have gained from this thread is the knowledge that there are people in this world who know so much more about the only language I speak than I do, that I wonder if they see a sentence in the same way I see a formula.

They must or they would not know instinctively that it was absolutely right or absolutely wrong. The only flaw in that, is that no one and no thing is ever absolutely right or wrong!

Cheers for now,
Dad came back last night so today I go back to my babies. I enjoy running the business but I’m glad I don’t do it full time! It’s been an interesting thread indeed. Good wishes to you all.
Kiah

Good wishes to you also Kiah. Just a small add on………I am Dutch, but lived and worked till September 2004 in Arizona for almost 5 years. No, that does not mean my grip on the English language is as good as a native speaker. But it does mean I understand the language. Plus, for others, the word "detail" translated into Dutch is "detail". Surprising isn’t it:)) Pronounciation is a bit different (more like the French "detail") but still……..

I think it is partly semantic Johan, and partly a small clash between photographers and Photoshop users. I believe you are doing a great job Kiah and again I would love to see more of your work and your progress on this group. Because there are a lot of us struggling with customers who want to have a blown up poster from an original that looks impossible. Just an example for the sake of it.

Now to end it all: Detail is a word, it is the picture that gives you the detail, or not. What is not there will never be there. Except for adding pixels, to give the human eye the option, the possibility, to see the detail. Call it sharpness, I do not care. Adding elements? No. Adding sharpness? Yes. And the effect is that the blown up poster has the same detail as the original.

steg

"Johan W. Elzenga" wrote:

One Million Pics wrote:

So.
Now are we all in agreement?
Yes?
Good!
Let’s get on with our lives.
At least 700,000 new butterflies were born and probably about 900.000.000 new flowers bloomed while we all argued if adding "dots between dots" (as one person put it) is adding detail or not.
So who actually photographed those wonderful events? Anyone? No?

It’s winter in my part of the world. No flowers or butterflies here. That’s why I had time to discuss pixels. 😉

—
Johan W. Elzenga

That is because nowadays they are stealing flowers from the yards to get high!! LOL

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 13:30:04 +1000, James Douglas
wrote:

Does it really matter if the detail is perceived or actual? Does it matter also if someone in Holland or Britain expects detail to be more subject matter whilst someone in Australia is content just have detail in their enlargement? For what it is worth, I think you could all take a lesson or two in accepting what you have without questioning if it really does exist. Pedantic Lunatics. Is it a full moon in Holland?

It has nothing to do with being pedantic. You get exactly the same comment when people misuse dpi to describe ppi. The European Space Agency lost a satellite because NASA worked in inches and ESA worked in mm. If you'[re describing a technical process, you should use precise language. There or thereabouts just isn’t good enough.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:19 +1000, James Douglas
wrote:

Now I have a question. This is an English speaking group yet there seems to be a significant number of posts to this thread from people who have acquired English as an addition to their native tongue. It is these people who are most vocal in the use of detail (apart from Hecate). My question is, where is this newsgroup, geographically speaking? I know it’s on my ISP’s server but it would seem to be in a strange land from the posts I’ve just read.

Yes, it’s an English speaking group. That doesn’t mean that it’s limited to people whose first language is English. Any Usenet newsgroup occupies a virtual world comprising anyone, anywhere with a computer. Or are you trying to ghettoise Usenet and make sure "them damn furriners don’t get into *our* group"? Either way I find your comment suspiciously racist.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Hecate wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:19 +1000, James Douglas
wrote:

Now I have a question. This is an English speaking group yet there seems to be a significant number of posts to this thread from people who have acquired English as an addition to their native tongue. It is these people who are most vocal in the use of detail (apart from Hecate). My question is, where is this newsgroup, geographically speaking? I know it’s on my ISP’s server but it would seem to be in a strange land from the posts I’ve just read.

Yes, it’s an English speaking group. That doesn’t mean that it’s limited to people whose first language is English. Any Usenet newsgroup occupies a virtual world comprising anyone, anywhere with a computer. Or are you trying to ghettoise Usenet and make sure "them damn furriners don’t get into *our* group"? Either way I find your comment suspiciously racist.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

You really must be Joking Hecate. Me a racist? Yeah, good one, which race am I to discriminate against? My own or are they exempt from the suggestion?

Anyway, I am a photographer, not a Internet Service Provider. I just looked up a bunch of newsgroups with Photoshop in their name which my ISP offers and this was one of them. I asked the question because I’ve seen reference to "bugger off yank this is a Aussie group" in aus.whatever groups and wondered if this was a region specific group too.

When someone made to remark they were Dutch and Kiah was not likely to sell her work ‘here’, I presumed then that this might have been a European centric group. Thanks to Helmut and yourself, I now know a little more about it. Did I miss something in the racist thing? You must be real shocker to go shopping with Hecate! Your suspicious nature is quite amusing.

JD

James Douglas wrote:

I asked the question because I’ve
seen reference to "bugger off yank this is a Aussie group" in aus.whatever groups

You may want to have a closer look at a group’s name.

Language-specific groups as well as country-specific groups have an appropriate country code in their names:

at.graphik.photoshop
fr.graphisme.photoshop
it.grafica.photoshop
de.graphik.photoshop etc.

would be examples (I made them up, but something like that certainly exists). The first one would be an Austrian group, German-speaking as the de. group would be, but positively austrocentric.

And au.graphics.photoshop would be the "down under" home. They should put a line into the group’s FAQ though, saying "Guests please note that we use ‘detail’ indiscriminately as a synonym for ‘sharpness’ and ‘resolution’ here!" *ggg*

Did I miss something in the racist thing?

I’m glad Hecate felt it too, because I was careful *not* to point it out, thinking that it might be some excessive sensitiveness on my part.
"Dutch" does not only mean "citizen of the Netherlands", but in some parts of ‘Murrica it used to have the same connotation as "them f***ing Krauts" or the like and was used pretty indiscriminately for the Dutch as well as for the German-speaking ("Deutsch"). In combintation with "gents" it seemed to have a bit of the "black gent" scent that I’ve heard in use with a distinct connotation of "I mustn’t say ‘damned Nigger’!".
And your question referring to the whereabouts of the group added a touch of "Do we really have to cope with them folks from abroad here?".

But then I was sure you didn’t mean it to be understood in that way, so I kept my mouth shut. And your suprised reaction to Hecate’s post shows that it certainly was *not* intended to be racist!

And now back to work — I’ve half a metre of snow in front of the garage to get rid of…

Helmut
—
All typos © My Knotty Fingers Ltd. Capacity Dept.

Hecate wrote:

On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:19 +1000, James Douglas
wrote:

Now I have a question. This is an English speaking group yet there seems to be a significant number of posts to this thread from people who have acquired English as an addition to their native tongue. It is these people who are most vocal in the use of detail (apart from Hecate). My question is, where is this newsgroup, geographically speaking? I know it’s on my ISP’s server but it would seem to be in a strange land from the posts I’ve just read.

Yes, it’s an English speaking group. That doesn’t mean that it’s limited to people whose first language is English. Any Usenet newsgroup occupies a virtual world comprising anyone, anywhere with a computer. Or are you trying to ghettoise Usenet and make sure "them damn furriners don’t get into *our* group"? Either way I find your comment suspiciously racist.

—

Hecate

LOL
Racist huh? That is a bit overdoing it Hecate. People might know by now that Johan and I are Dutch, but you have no idea of the color of my skin:)) Having that said and reading James’ post again I must say it is hard to deny him some ignorance………..all alt. newsgroups are English speaking, that is an agreement in the usenet community and rightly so. To assume the group "is American" is the same as assuming the internet is located in Silicon Valley.

steg

James Douglas wrote:

Did I miss something in the racist thing?

I didn’t feel you were being a racist, but when you called me a ‘pedantic lunatic’, I knew you are the kind of person I don’t want to have any further discussion with.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl/

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

James Douglas wrote:

Did I miss something in the racist thing?

I didn’t feel you were being a racist, but when you called me a ‘pedantic lunatic’, I knew you are the kind of person I don’t want to have any further discussion with.

LOL – all this is par for the course, I’m afraid, on Usenet, and this has been a relatively civil conversation.

Wear asbestos underclothing at all times. 🙂
—

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:30:57 +1000, James Douglas
wrote:

You really must be Joking Hecate. Me a racist? Yeah, good one, which race am I to discriminate against? My own or are they exempt from the suggestion?

Anyway, I am a photographer, not a Internet Service Provider. I just looked up a bunch of newsgroups with Photoshop in their name which my ISP offers and this was one of them. I asked the question because I’ve seen reference to "bugger off yank this is a Aussie group" in aus.whatever groups and wondered if this was a region specific group too.
When someone made to remark they were Dutch and Kiah was not likely to sell her work ‘here’, I presumed then that this might have been a European centric group. Thanks to Helmut and yourself, I now know a little more about it. Did I miss something in the racist thing? You must be real shocker to go shopping with Hecate! Your suspicious nature is quite amusing.

It was your comment about this being an English speaking group followed by your remark about non-English as a first language speakers being the people who were arguing with Kiah. If I’m wrong that’s fine, but I’ve seen comments on newsgroups before concerning "foreign" posters, which is why I was suspicious.

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:55:14 GMT, "Mike Russell" wrote:

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

James Douglas wrote:

Did I miss something in the racist thing?

I didn’t feel you were being a racist, but when you called me a ‘pedantic lunatic’, I knew you are the kind of person I don’t want to have any further discussion with.

LOL – all this is par for the course, I’m afraid, on Usenet, and this has been a relatively civil conversation.

Wear asbestos underclothing at all times. 🙂

LOL! With the exception of the known "problems" who turn up every now and again, this is generally a quite civil group. 🙂

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:58:05 +0100, steggy wrote:

LOL
Racist huh? That is a bit overdoing it Hecate. People might know by now that Johan and I are Dutch, but you have no idea of the color of my skin:)) Having that said and reading James’ post again I must say it is hard to deny him some ignorance………..all alt. newsgroups are English speaking, that is an agreement in the usenet community and rightly so. To assume the group "is American" is the same as assuming the internet is located in Silicon Valley.

Yeah, it’s just that I’ve seen it before so I was naturally suspicious 🙂

—

Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui

Johan W. Elzenga wrote:

James Douglas wrote:

Did I miss something in the racist thing?

I didn’t feel you were being a racist, but when you called me a ‘pedantic lunatic’, I knew you are the kind of person I don’t want to have any further discussion with.

You have the right to take what others say in any way you please, Johan. Likewise Hecate can presume someone who is often the brunt of racist remarks, is themselves a racist or not, as the case may be.

You are however pedantic in the Dictionary of English description, based on your past postings, emphasising a
need/compulsion/requirement/willingness to repeatedly correct people on the finest detail of a description.

Unlike Hecate, I do not believe you can be precise in any English description of a process or word because the lack of precision in the language does not permit you to. You only need to read a (English)legal contract to see that covering every eventuality of a description takes reams of paper and still cannot successfully do it. Anyone who focuses on precision in the English language to the exclusion of the intent is ‘pedantic’.

Your reaction to the finite detail of a word was pedantic to be sure. The other word in your reference quotes me wrongly and you have taken it out of context. Lunatic is a valid description of someone who behaves unpredictably during the full phase of the moon. The wording was lunatics (plural, meaning more than one) in the context "if it were a full moon in Holland".

To me, your reaction to someone else’s use of the word "detail" is unpredictable as were your arguments to support your posts. To me, who only speaks English and was not born in an English speaking country, the use of "Pedantic Lunatics", is entirely appropriate for people who concentrate on a detail to the detriment of the whole *if* they do it whilst there is full moon. This is why I asked if the moon was full in Holland in the same sentence.

I was not in fact referring to you singularly. Feel free to presume I was referring to both sides of your personality if you wish. That would allow me the use of other descriptions in future correspondence! – I would have put one of those smiling faces here if I knew how !!

JD

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 12:41:04 +1000, James Douglas
wrote:

Unlike Hecate, I do not believe you can be precise in any English description of a process or word because the lack of precision in the language does not permit you to.

You miss the point. We’re not talking descriptions we’re talking technical terms. A description is a "word picture" of an object, situation and so forth. It’s not technical usage. Detail is technical usage, at least amongst photographers. All scientific or technical areas have their own specific terms which describe specific instances. This is one of those cases.

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Hecate – The Real One

veni, vidi, reliqui