Help with Digital Images

[tygrus2000]

Ok, I have a ton of digital images which I have been taking for the last six months and I have sat down and used various software to balance exposure, color correct, enhance colors and add some interesting filtering effects. The images look very good, however, you can still tell they are digital, they look a little flat and do not have the depth that film photos do. This is a common complaint of digital versus film.

Is there any plug in or stand alone software that is specifically designed to give digital more of a film look with more depth and perspective?
thx.

Tygrus

[racer-x]

Maybe you need a better camera or learn to use manual settings. My Fujifilm finepix 3800 3.2 megepixel camera produces excellent picture, especially when I use them in video.

I usually run them through Photoshop > levels(auto levels), Then resize to 720x534 @100 dpi. I also run the NTSC filter through them.

[tygrus2000]

Racer, thanks for the advice, I think the technique I used to take the pictures is fine, its just that if you have seen film photos, really good ones, they look better for some reason than digital. Its just due to the fact that film has about 10 times the resolution and color reproduction, so you can notice they look more lifelike.

I'll try the NTSC filter and then put them to video and see how they look before I go any further.

tygrus

[andkiich]

Unless you are using a high end digital camera(I think 6 megapixel or higher) then you will not get pictures that approach the quality of a good 35mm.

They may look to the casual observer, but to a professional photographer, the difference is there.

I guess that my only suggestion would be that you would have to get a 6+ megapixel camera(last ones I say were $1000 and up) and those were without the lense or storage.

[racer-x]

I agree that a good 35 mm camera is miles ahead of digital cameras at the moment.

The film pictures that you refer to were scaned at a very high resolution and dpi count. They were then brought into a high end video editor that suports high resolution pictures at native resolution. Most video editors will resize the resolution to 720x480 as soon as you bring them into the timeline. In other words, if you have a picture that is 4000 x 3000 dpi, it will become 720 x 480 once you bring it into the timeline. The very high resolution lets you zoom in and still maintain high quality image.

The only programs I know for sure that suport and maintain resolutions that high are Premiere Pro (Premiere 6.5 doesn't) and After Effects. I'm sure there are probably others.