I've been imaging a part of my collection, Capped Bust Half Dimes. I haven't been happy with the results. Part of the problem is taking the picture in Fine Jpeg, even with my 60mm macro lens. I was taking a 15mm coin and zooming it to a 185mm screen image. Features that you can't see with the naked eye (or not even much with a 9x loupe) really show up, mostly scratches. If a seller used that image, I would never buy a coin that looked like that. I did a test using the RAW format; lots more resolution. So now I can see the scratches even better plus many that I couldn't see before. BUT I learned how to tweak the image with Photoshop just enough to get the coin to look like what you'd see with the naked eye or at a 3x magnification. I didn't overdo it. I didn't want it to look like an MS-67 coin. Slowly I'm learning. Here's the original .jpg image reduced to 40% (what I use as screen size). Here's the RAW image tweaked and converted to .jpg and reduced to 40%. It's just a touch better. I could improve it more BUT I want to keep it real. BTW that is a full bisecting die crack. It's an 1834 LM-4 variety.
Not knocking the coin at all..but what a shame that there is so much details on that coin . Look at the stars hardly any wear. The broach,and curls are sharp. Very cool specimen with the bisecting crack.
