Happy Fall!

Thank you for being customers of Pixmonix!

We have been busy this fall. We have a great Fall sale going with savings on all scanning services -- full service scans start as low as $0.50 each. We have updated our website to make it easier to use. Additionally, we have added more information on scanning your slides and negatives and enjoying your digital images. Mostly we have been busy scanning your slides and negatives. And, we got the kids back to school.

We've got some great new services coming in the next few months! Stay tuned for updates in the next newsletter.

Steve Bennett
Pixmonix President

No matter how wonderful your digital images may be, eventually, you will want to get prints of at least some of them. You can do make prints yourself at home with your inkjet printer or you can use one of the great services available for printing digital images.

There are many digital photo printing services available on the Internet and locally at various retailers. A few that we like to use include dotPhoto (www.dotphoto.com), Adorama (www.adorama.com), and Mpix (www.mpix.com) for prints by mail and Costco (www.costco.com) and Target (www.target.com) for prints that we can pick up locally.

All of these services allow you to upload your digital images using easy-to-use web interfaces. Retail stores like Target and Costco also let you carry your image into the store for printing on CD/DVD or memory cards in various forms.

After uploading (or at the kiosk at the retail stores), you can buy prints in various sizes and forms. All of the expected sizes are available, including wallets, 4" x 6", 5" x 7" and 8" x 10". Prints are not expensive - 4" x 6" prints are approximately $0.20-$0.30 each, 5" x 7" prints are approximately $1. Additionally, you can create cards, calendars, mouse pads, mugs, clothing, holiday ornaments and just about anything else you can imagine with your digital images.

All of these printing services will produce high quality prints on normal photographic papers that have long lifetimes (not like the prints from inexpensive inkjet printers). They look and feel just like prints from film to which you are accustomed. Higher end services such as Mpix, dotPhoto and Adorama offer additional choices of paper type. In this regard, Mpix is the leader with a variety of high-end paper choices. The Kodak E-Surface and Metallic papers that Mpix offers are excellent. The extra cents you pay per print for nice paper is definitely worthwhile!

Generally, the color management standards of these companies are good. Costco, Mpix and other printers provide color profiles for their printers or tell you the standard profiles that they expect. Making your computer color-profile aware and properly calibrated is not for the squeamish - many volumes have been written on color management. It is worthwhile to do if you want your prints to match more exactly what you see on your monitor.

Choosing between the mail order services and those available locally is a question of timing and order sizing. Both offer good quality and pricing. For a few prints, you may be better off working with a local printer; for more prints, you can get better quality at a similar total price from the mail order companies but you do have to wait a few days for your prints. We have never been disappointed by the mail order services - but there are times when you want the prints right away.

Most online printing services also allow you to share the photos that you upload with friends and family over the Internet. This is not a perfect solution, however. The images you can see on the website are small and are usually crowded with offers to sell prints of the displayed photos. If sharing is your goal, you are better off building DVD slide shows (more on that in the next newsletter), or simply giving your friends and family copies of the digital images on CD or DVD.

It is time to harvest time some of those great digital images.

Printing your digital images can be wonderful. And wonderfully frustrating. Dealing with a top-notch printing service eliminates a lot of the hassles. This month's Photoshop tip is intended to arm you to avoid one source of frustrations that many people encounter along the way.

First, a definition: aspect ratio is the relationship of an image's width and height. 35mm film frames are approximately 24mm x 36mm, giving an aspect ratio of 2:3. Many common photo print sizes have different aspect ratios, however. For example, though a 4" x 6" print has an aspect ratio of 2:3 (matching the 35mm film), an 8" x 10" has an aspect ratio of 4:5.

When you print a digital image, the aspect ratio of the image is matched to the aspect ratio of the print size by either clipping parts of the image to make the image fill the entire printing area or adding blank white borders around the image to make the aspect ratio match the print size. If you care about the composition and form of your printed images, neither of these may be acceptable options.

Let's look at a couple of examples. Suppose that you want to print a typical 35mm slide scan at 4" by 6" inches. At this print aspect ratio, the raw scan should be in roughly the correct aspect ratio and hence should print without much of the image being clipped. On the other hand, if you print this same file to 5"x7" paper, part of the image will be clipped (or blank strips will be printed along the two short edges, depending on the practice of the printer).

If the important image contents are well away from the edges of the picture, you can just let your photo printing service crop the image automatically (just as you would have done if you had prints made from the 35mm negative) -- assuming that the printer offers this option.

If you care about parts of the image that are along the edges, you should crop the photo to the correct aspect ratio prior to uploading the images to the printer; careful cropping can assure that your prints contain the parts of the image that you care about. Additionally, you might want to crop and enlarge only a portion of the image. Having the images in digital form give us additional control that we didn't have with film.

Don't worry! Cropping is easy to do with almost every photo editing package. We'll describe the steps to take if you have Photoshop Elements or Photoshop, but other packages should be very similar.

1. Always work on copies of your images. If you save a file using the same file name after doing a crop or other editing, the original file that you opened is gone forever. Additionally, note that repeatedly opening, editing, and saving digital images in JPEG format results in a degradation in quality. Open the copy of the image you want to crop in your photo editor.
2. Press the letter "c" to activate the crop tool (or click on the crop tool in the toolbox).
3. In the options bar (at the top of the screen) enter the desired height and width. You can simply enter "4" and "6", for example, for a 4" x 6" crop. (Do not put a number in the resolution field since you don't want the image resampled when you crop it.)
4. Click in your photo and drag out the rectangular cropping area. Photoshop will keep the ratio of height and width constant according to the values you entered into the options bar no matter how you drag the box.
5. When you have the area selected that you want to keep, release the mouse button.
6. You can fine tune the crop by dragging the whole crop box by clicking in the center of the box and dragging, or by grabbing the resize handles on the outside to adjust the size. You can rotate the cropped area by moving your mouse pointer outside the border of the crop area and then clicking and dragging. The aspect ratio will be enforced by Photoshop.
7. When you are happy, hit the Enter (Return) key.
8. Save off your now cropped image, ready for upload to a printing service. Done!

Questions on this procedure? Please let us know at https://www.pixmonix.com/contact.php.

One other thing to note is that most printing services have a noticeable bleed area -- part of your image will be allowed to "hang off the sides" so that the printing goes all the way to the edge of the paper. Hence even images cropped to the correct aspect ratio will lose some of the image along each edge. The amount lost depends on the service being used. You may need to experiment a bit to see how your printing service behaves, though some of the services try to show you the effect online.

It's Fall! Time to clean up the yard. At Pixmonix, we are busy cleaning up your old slides and negatives.

Our hardware and software provide capabilities which we apply to your images to give you digital images that will amaze you - removing the effects of age and rough handling - and reducing or eliminating the need to edit the images that you receive from us.

ICE

"ICE" stands for Image Correction and Enhancement. This is the technology in our scanners and software that effectively removes the effects of minor scratches and dust contamination on your slides or negatives. ICE works on color films and C-41 processed B&W films; it will not remove the effects of scratches or dust on traditional B&W films (such as Tri-Pan or TMAX). We apply ICE on all slide and negative scans where it is effective. This service is included in all of our prices - not a costly extra.

ICE works using a combination of hardware and software technologies. The scanner hardware scans the film using infrared light to illuminate the film. This allows the sensors in the scanner to pick up the imperfections on the surface of the film - such as dust particles and scratches in the film. Software then electronically "subtracts" the effect of the imperfection from the digital image. It sounds a bit like magic - and it works like magic! However, ICE is not perfect. It can't recover very badly scratched or seriously dirty films. But for average films it does an amazing job.

ROC

Slides and negatives fade over time. To complicate things, film fades at different rates in different areas of the color spectrum and differently in shadow areas compared to highlight areas. "ROC" is the technology in our software that restores the color of your faded slides or negatives. ROC works by analyzing the differences between the red, green and blue colors in slide film (yellow, magenta and cyan dyes in negative films) to determine a model of the original film stock. Using this model, the software then restores the original colors by selectively increasing or decreasing components of the color in the final digital image.

This fantastic blob of mathematical algorithms can have absolutely amazing results. However, ROC works great on some slides and terribly on others. We apply ROC on slides and negatives that will benefit from it; this is included in our scanning prices - not a costly extra. We apply this technology selectively based on the condition and age of your film and our experience with the effectiveness of the technique.

GEM

When scanning film at high resolutions (e.g., 4000 PPI), the grain of the film being scanned can become apparent. "GEM" is the technology in our software that reduces the perceived effect of film grain during the scanning process. We apply GEM on any slide or negative that will benefit from it; this is included in our prices - not a costly extra.

Like ROC, GEM works by doing a complicated mathematical analysis of the different colors in the scanner data to produce a model of the film and grain patterns and then applies the model to reduce the visible effect of the grain. It is far more effective than simple software techniques such as filters which introduce noise into the image in order to blur the grain patterns -- and you lose less of the fine detail in the image as a result.

An Example...

Shown below is a crop of a small part of a scan of a 35 year old slide. We have scanned the same slide three times to show the effect of ICE and ROC. The differences are remarkable! Please visit our website for larger example images. (Those are beads on a baby stroller circa 1969 shot on Kodak slide film.)

No ICE, No ROC Scratches, dust and color fade are apparent.	With ICE Dust and scratches are removed	With ICE and ROC Colors are returned to their original luster.

Benefits of ICE, ROC and GEM

Without ICE, you will not be happy with the resulting scanned images. Even very "clean" negatives and slides have some dust and scratches - and these imperfections will show up on the scans. Most film has not spent its life in pristine conditions and hence has finger prints, dust, dirt, fungus and scratches. For most films, the use of ICE will remove the need for you to spend hours in your photo editing package manually removing these effects of age and handling from your scanned images. Like ICE, the benefit of using GEM and ROC is that you will spend less time manipulating your scanned images to produce good prints.

Applied correctly, these are amazingly useful tools. We are not slaves to this technology, however. We have the knowledge and experience to utilize these tools effectively when we scan and process your images. We always use our experienced eyes before we use these tools.

"Digital ICE4", "Digital GEM" and "Digital ROC" are brand names of products from Applied Science Fiction (now a Kodak company). Please see the Kodak/Applied Science Fiction website for lots more details on these tools.

We are now exclusively using gold archival-quality CDs and DVDs to deliver your digital images. The discs that we use from Mam-A have expected storage lifetimes of up to 300 years. You can read more about these discs on the Mam-A website.

We do not charge extra for these discs!

Just received my discs via Fedex. I could not be happier. You will be seeing many more of my slides in the next few months!
Thanks,
Charlie
(Salem, MA)

HELLO,
THANKS FOR THE EMAIL AND THE ATTENTION THAT YOU GAVE MY NEGATIVES. I REALLY DIDN'T EXPECT THIS. GREAT SERVICE.
THANKS,
GLENN
(Glendale, CA)

No, we are not selling pumpkins (they cost too much to ship). But for the month of October, on top of the great saving available from our Fall sale, you are invited to enter the promo code "COLORS" on your order form to save $3 on your order of $30 or more.**