Reply #3: The red thing was a poor joke. [View All]

[Touchdown]

You can't have a winner every day, I guess.:dunce:

Anyhow. I am assuming that your first shot is either sand or snow. Look closely at the field here on the site. You'll notice blues greens, yellows, and reds that are distinct. This is a result of digital artifacting. What those distinct colors are is artifacts. What we're seeing is not a result of the original print or negative, but what the computer does with the information.

Digital artifacting occurs when an image is transferred into the digital realm. Normally, Photoshop will have the full computer download of the image, or "RAW" form, if it's scanned directly into it. This can be between 20 and 70 MEGS of computer memory for a single image. There is rarely artifacting in these, although it does occur with certain complex images.

JPEG is a compression algorithm. What it does is reduce the size of the memory necessary to display an image. It's in the same family as MP3, MPEG-2 (used on DVDs), DTS (movie sound), etc. A high or max quality JPEG compression should knock down the same PSD (Photoshop Display) image down to 1-3 MEGS (million bytes). The more an image is compressed, the more artifacting it gets. So, if an image gets reduced to 70-120 KILOS (Thousand bytes), then pixels (little boxes computers use to draw pictures) start to become prominent, and the photo's quality is degraded. Some photo hosting sites will automatically compress your images if they're too large a JPEG. Photobucket reduces everything to 1 MEG or less for me.

So, with that. Look at your original photo in photoshop, and see if you can see these same artifacts that we see here on the net. If so, try scanning it again using a larger capture, like 600 X 600 or 1200 X 1200 dpi (Dots Per Inch). If you only have a newer flatbed, then make it as large as the scanner will go.

Sorry to be so wordy. I don't know how to explain it easily.