Photoshop your pictures to make professional looking images

I have to say that when you get to the Comparison stage in the first post, I prefer the one on the left.

 

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The brightness might be a tad too high on this photo, but I promise the actual coin looks more like the one on the right.

 

Thanks for resurrecting this thread, I had forgotten to comment! Anyway...

Suppose one doesn't have either a perfectly round coin or a white background. What then?

 

I think your end result looks overly-retouched. I honestly like the pic on the left better. A bit better lighting and you wouldn't need to poke at it aside from cropping.

 

I like the multi shaded background. Gives the coin a look of being set above the background or floating.

 

You could also try PhotoScape ( www.photoscape.org ), it's free and does circular cropping, along with the size, color, contrast, etc. adjustments. And it's pretty intuitive and easy to use.

 

this is exactly what I do with my pictures, step for step until you ad the brightness and auto levels steps. Who knew I was so close!?! Great post!

 

Aww Lehigh, you're an expert to me!

Thanks for the extremely informative post. Got it bookmarked. The results are great. I typically just use photobucket's crude editing to help me out a bit but these crop/cut/ background features are awesome.

To do list:

Get Photoshop software!

 

Very nice post, Lehigh.

Some constructive criticism -- I would strongly suggest that the photographer try and get the color, contrast, and brightness right IN CAMERA rather than rely on post-processing. The result will be better photographs in virtually all cases.

Otherwise, a well done post that I'm sure many people will find valuable.

Take care....Mike

 

After looking at them again... really, the first picture isn't bad. It doesn't have the pop of the last picture. It doesn't really bring out the color of the toning as the last picture does. But your first picture, to me, would be more than adequate for what it looks like in real life, in hand, for an auction pic.

It appears to me that bringing out the colors in the toning, as in the last pic, tends to over-expose the clean side a little much. But it is more intense in that pic and the cropping leaves nothing else for your eye to be drawn to.

 

I agree Mike but that is much easier said than done, especially with toned coins. I have gotten much better and plan to steadily improve now that I have Mark Goodman's book. I now judge my photographic proficiency by how much my photoshop procedure changes the look of the photo. Ideally, you should be able to take a photo, complete the steps above, and see very little change.

It is funny that this was one of the posts that was in the Cointalk HOF before it got wiped clean and now it has been nominated again.

I would like to say for the record that I am not a proponent of manually adjusting color settings in photoshop in order to juice photos. This method only adjusts the color and contrast according to what the software thinks it is supposed to look like. It works well for me to get my photos to look like the actual coin. Once I can achieve that without photoshop, I will be very happy indeed.

 

There is another great photographer coming up the ranks, BlueCC photo ( google it ).

I agree, the trick is to get it right on the camera with minimal after effects, otherwise the photo's can appear " juiced " and will get you into a not fun thread on " juicing " you pics.

Time, practice, and time will make us all good. The lack of it keeps us average.

 

I don't think the first photo is bad, it just is not a good representation of the actual coin. I do however think I adjusted the brightness too high before I hit the auto levels button. Here is a comparison photo showing the original photo, the over-brightened one, and a new one with a better balance in the middle.



I pulled out the coin and the middle photo is the best representation of the actual coin IMO.

 

Minute differences, drastic change

I took pictures of this coin, doing everything the same as I would when taking pictures of copper. I tried diffusing the light and tried with direct light, but did not notice a difference in the pictures. I also tried the light coming from different directions, with no noticeable results. I was not happy with the results once I loaded the pics to the computer.




Since I was not happy with the results from the first set of pictures, I tried again. Believe it or not, this is the same coin.
The only difference between this set of pictures and the first set, is the white background, and I hit the coin with as much light as possible. I still did not capture the true appearance of the coin in hand. The coin in hand is not nearly as dark, and ugly. The coin is rather attractive and shows alot more color. The colors are irredescent and look very similar to an oil slick in a puddle of water.




This is the same picture that I show above. Ardatirion was kind enough to brighten the image for me as I do not have any picture editing programs on my computer. This picture does give a better representation of the coin in hand, but still does not do it justice. I think I will have to playy around with my settings alittle more. It is a whole different game than photographing copper. I have noticed that my camera takes better pictures of coins that are silver in color, on a white background. But my camera likes a darker background for copper coins. My pictures of copper on a white background are terrible, the color is way off and the pictures lack detail.

 

I know this is an old thread, but I just thought I'd share these results. The top one is the unedited image. Which one do you like best?