Cropping and re-sizing raw pics using an iPad

I have been using the built-in Edit facility and free Image Size app. on my iPad to crop and resize all of my raw photos (to 300x300 pixels) for the past two years or so.

My photography set-up (out of necessity) is very simple and basic: my iPad, a chair and a small square of fine black velvet backed craft paper (mainly to preclude coin peripheral shadows). I take all pics freehand in my man cave using the natural light from the window. Just about all of the coin pics I post here (and my web pages and Avatar pics) were produced this way.

 

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I do pretty much the same thing and find it quite effective.

 

That's exactly what i was wondering (about lighting) as i was reading the first part of your post. Thank you for sharing! I take a lo-fi approach standing at my dining room table with overhead light. Inhand has been the only way i can properly adjust the coin to get nicer lighting... it makes cutting out the background tough. I wish i could photo with solid bkg.

 

The secret of good coin photography is not equipment or techniques as much as looking at your first image and being able to recognize something that would make it better. About 1% of the time, that may require new equipment but more often it requires a change of attitude or interest on the part of the operator. I really get tired of people blaming their poor images on their cameras when they are using less than half of the capabilities of that equipment. I do not pretend to know the weaknesses of all imaging systems and have no interest in learning a thousand old phone models. I wish I could get better with the ones I have. Since I have been a photographer almost as long as I have collected coins, I may have used more different cameras than most and have opinions on things most people would ignore. The limitations are more likely to be when the user stops caring to learn than anything else.

I have never noticed a problem with jamesicus' photos that in any way prevented them for showing his coins to good advantage. I have never touched an iPad but may have to borrow my wife's (non-Apple) tablet and try it but I hope it does not make me throw out my cameras.

 

I take photos with my (old) iPhone and then piece them together with a free app called Pic Stitch. I email myself the results. So I do pretty much everything on my phone. Setting a 3-second timer eliminates shake and frees both hands to manipulate the light.

The most important aspect is natural light. I've never found a substitute, even after making a light box. I experiment with cupping my hand around the coin, which affects lighting and sometimes makes the coin itself actually appear brighter. Sometimes I will sweeten the photo with an auto-enhance feature in the desktop Windows default photo program/app, unless I feel the resulting image is not reasonably true to the coin in hand.

I just place a little foldout camping table outside with a stand that keeps my iPhone the optimal distance away from the coin. The coin is balanced on an old CD spindle that gives it the appearance of "floating" over a blue cloth background.

The photos are adequate; not hi-res, but I don't need them to be and wouldn't want 25 MB photos clogging my desktop.

Silver coins photograph really well with this method, and bronze coins do ok.

 

I must add ……………

Be sure to visit the excellent @chrsmat71 post via the following CT link: Easy Coin Pic Editing Tutorial Vid

…………… and especially the web page of Doug Smith who is, after all, the guru of all things coin photography and has forgotten more than the majority of us will ever know about taking “par excellence” coin photographs using every imaginable type of camera and set-up.

 

This is handheld with a Samsung tablet. If I did not own a camera and have so much invested in learning to use it, I suppose I could learn to use the tablet. I'd start by using a camera support to prevent blur from not holding steady but here I shot a burst of images and selected the best one. The light is from a nearby window and could be corrected (less blue and less contrast) a bit but the point is, when is good enough good enough???


Is this better? The camera cost 10x as much and I put more effort into the picture. The coin is deceptive since it has a lot more yellow sand on the obverse. I am not finished with this yet but I don't like to stop fidgiting with photos. That is my hobby.

 

It looks more than good enough for a coin forum, Doug.

Natural lighting can be very good... but you can't adjust the angle. Pictures taken in the earlier morning or later afternoon can do marvelous things to enhance the apparent relief of a coin. If you want consistency in your images if you don't want to have to wait until a day with the perfect amount of cloud cover, and if you don't want to have to wait until a precise time window for the optimum angle of light, artificial lighting is the way to go.

For Christmas I bought myself a new Ott light (on sale, too!). It's LED rather than fluorescent but so far I'm very happy with it. You can choose between three different color temperatures but the bottom line is that I white balance anyway so the color temperature is less critical.



I push the two light heads together for unidirectional lighting or I can split them apart and have the camera between them. The stem of the lamp is very flexible.

 

Great post Gavin! I also do everything on my iPad - very quick and easy - I can take a raw photo, crop and resize it, install it on a web page, upload it to my server and display it on Coin Talk within twenty minutes of receiving a new coin. I accept that my coin pics are not first rate, but they will do.

 

A "good" question indeed. My question is, "How much can one 'enhance' a photo until it becomes unacceptable/illegitimate/fraudulent/untrue?"

 

Oops, I neglected to recognize your considerable (and most excellent) photography skills TIF - please excuse the omission.

 

Actually a most excellent question, Gavin. I absolutely refuse to “enhance” my photographs in any way. To me, cropping and resizing is the only way to go. If I do not like the lighting or background, I re-take the pic. Quick and easy enough to to do.

 

Yes, the second image is considerably better but for most people (people who aren't into photography) it is not better enough to warrant the expense and learning curve. Fantastic picture though!

I'm just a pretender to the throne, somewhat skilled in Photoshop Elements .

 

Very nice pic @TypeCoin971793 - thanks for posting it.

 

When you take a picture with any system, the result is enhanced according to instructions given that system. The default settings are no more true than what you can input yourself starting with a raw image. You can look at coin and look at the photo and change it for better or for worse.

I cringe when people ask how the coin looks 'in hand'. The hand and coin rely on the light they are in. If you think your coin is too dark to see where you are, move to someplace with better light. If your camera is making photos that are not correct, change them. I once worked for a man who said the photo he was examining was too red and he wanted it remade. He was wearing a red shirt and holding the photo against his belly. If he took that same photo outside and changed to a white shirt, he would have said it was too light.

I do agree with jamesicus that it is usually easier to reshoot than to make major changes. Postprocessing tools work best in small doses. This is especially true if your camera only records 8 bits per pixel (jpg) rather than starting with RAW. The problem with postprocessing is most beginners have not learned how and when the 'tricks' will help as opposed to just change the result.

 

I similarly use my phone (currently Samsung S9, and previously Samsung S7... I've found the S9 photos are heavily more saturated than the S7, but are much crisper) and use the free app Collage Maker (I think @Ryro or @ancient coin hunter might use it too, as I've seen it in their file name) to place them side-by-side. With less control of my surrounding during photography as I'd prefer and the coins deserve, I end up using the Filter > Adjust to tweak the photos to make them more accurate to what I see in-hand (using brightness, contrast, warmth, saturation, and sharpen), all based on the state of the photo. Though, I do often take a photo, check it out, see what I can do with moving myself, getting closer to the coin, etc. SNAP SNAP SNAP CHECK SNAP SNAP SNAP CHECK HAPPY MOVE ON.

 

I once was touring St. Peter's with a group. When we got to Michelangelo's Pieta, the guide launched into a lovely presentation on what made the work extraordinary. He then told us tourists to put our cameras away and enjoy the work, sternly warning, "The camera is a liar."

 

Very good observation, TIF. What with all my confounded Doctor visits these days and the very bright (even in winter) sunshiny days here in Arizona I have to choose my coin photography sessions carefully to avoid the problems you mention. If I miss out on the subdued morning sunshine I often have to wait until late afternoon (while attempting to avoid those ghastly shadows) - sometimes I have to put it off until another day. Overcast days are a great delight for me - fortunately we have frequent days like that here during winter and also during our summer thunderstorm season.

 

That goes for me too. I also have over one thousand images in the folders that service my Ancient coin, Calligraphy, Cactus, Antique Arms, Web Page Writer’s Tool Kit, etc. web pages and if I used higher resolution photos I would soon overload my server and make the images painfully slow to load for web page visitors.

 

I also used IrfanView for cropping and resizing raw photos for many years when I was using a dedicated camera and I like that application very much. However, since I started using my iPad to take photos I employ its editing facilities as I find them much quicker and easier to use.