Four Inexpensive Utilities for Digital Photography
by Gene Wilburn
This article appeared in the July 2003 issue of The Computer Paper.
The further you progress with digital photography the more you need specialty tools to help you achieve the best results from your digital images. Some of these exist as plugins to Photoshop and others are standalone utilities. To keep the cost of tools from getting out of hand, it's worthwhile evaluating the best shareware and freeware offerings. Here's a collection of four of my most often-used standalone utilities.
VueScan (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Whether you're scanning with a flatbed scanner, a dedicated film scanner, or both, the native product software often doesn't deliver the full capability of the scanner sensor. If you have a nagging feeling that your Minolta, Nikon, Epson, Canon or other software isn't delivering all the goods, check out Ed Hamrick's VueScan site (www.hamrick.com). VueScan has a large following amongst those who take their scanning seriously.
Despite a somewhat primitive-looking interface, VueScan abounds with advanced controls and settings for adjusting image scans. It comes with a large number of film profiles to assist with colour balance and provides custom profiling of both ICC and IT8 colour calibration. Depending on the capabilities of your scanner, it can scan in 24-, 48- and 64-bit modes. VueScan includes a cleaning feature similar to Digital ICE for scanners that have an IR (infrared) channel. I like VueScan for its ability to provide a single interface to multiple scanners.
My favourite and most used feature of VueScan is batch scanning. When I'm scanning rolls of 35mm film, I batch scan each strip of the roll, saving each VueScan RAW file to disk, along with a small JPG. When batch scanning is complete, I gather the JPGs into a folder and use Photoshop 7's Contact Sheet feature to create a digital contact sheet. I then use VueScan to re-read the saved RAW scans to fully process selected images that I will save as TIFFs. I burn the raw VueScan scan files to CD-R in case I want more of the images later. It saves me re-scanning.
VueScan is multi-platform shareware with a generous license. At $49.95US for the Standard edition and $79.95 for the Professional edition, the license allows you to use the software on up to four personal computers and provides unlimited free upgrades. There is a trial version you can download to compare with your existing scanner software.
IMatch (Windows only)
Once you start acquiring digital images from your camera and scanners, you soon have a disk full of images that are hard to find and organize. Early on in the process it's a good idea to organize images into directories that make sense, and to use some kind of meaningful naming convention. Even so, finding images after they number in the thousands, can be a challenge. IMatch (www.photools.com) to the rescue!
An easy-to-use image management system, IMatch allows you to search, share and publish your digital image collection by creating a database of thumbnail images with descriptors. It can read EXIF and IPTC metadata directly from the images and it offers one of the most versatile categorizing systems of any product on the market. It also offers batch conversion, label support, watermarking, and support for removable media, such as CDs and DVDs.
Priced at $49.95US, IMatch offers viewing capabilities for all standard file formats and for most digital camera RAW formats, including Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Fuji, Olympus and Kodak. For the adventurous, it provides a full scripting capability.
Neat Image (Windows only)
While I love the quality of the images I get from my Canon G2 digital camera at ISO 50, when I raise the ISO to 200 or 400 for dimly lit scenes, the sensor generates considerable noise (the digital rough equivalent of grain in film, but not as attractive). When I need to shoot in dim light without flash and still get good looking results I turn to Neat Image (www.neatimage.com), a denoiser/sharpening utility.
Neat Image provides a useful number of adjustments for calculating noise and algorithmically smoothing it out without losing too much image detail. While no product can work magic, this one comes close. It also does a fine job of reducing grain on scans from traditional high-speed films such as Tri-X. The versatility and quality come at the price of speed: Neat Image is very slow when used on large files. But it can be used in batch mode and be left chugging in the background overnight.
The Home edition of Neat Image costs $29.90US and the Professional edition costs $59.50. The Home edition only works on 8-bit images while the Professional edition works with 16-bit images. The Pro version also allows an unlimited number of files in a batch process. The Home version is limited to ten.
IrfanView (Windows only)
Last but not least in this roundup is one of my favourite programs: IrfanView (www.irfanview.com). Day in, day out, this is the utility I use the most, and it's free.
IrfanView is an image viewer. But to call it that is to call Tim Hortons just a doughnut shop. It is, but don't forget the bagels and the chili deal! Lean and snappy, IrfanView excels at displaying images and, with free plugins, can also display all EXIF and IPTC metadata. Furthermore, it does batch conversions, colour adjustments, resizing, sharpening, thumbnails, lossless JPG rotations, zooming, and even screen captures and wallpapers. It even performs simple automated slide shows.
I always use IrfanView to batch convert large images to thumbnails. And I appreciate its ability to send an image to the external image editor of my choice--with a single click I can launch what I'm viewing into Photoshop or Picture Window Pro. I strongly recommend this versatile, free product as the the first digital image utility you install for Windows.
Copyright © 2003 Gene Wilburn
Gene Wilburn is a Toronto-based writer and photographer. He can be reached at gene@wilburn.ca
