Lab #6: Digital Image Manipulation

This image of an exploding cigar was produced by scanning a silver print using the HP scanner in MIT's Edgerton Center Image Processing Lab. There are some obvious problems with the image quality, most notably: the contrast is too low, there are lots of dust spots on the print, and the bullet is almost off the edge of the photo. The first two of these problems can (and perhaps should have been) be corrected in the darkroom. The last problem can most easily be handled using digital techniques.

This second image tries to deal with all of the above issues, and then it gets just a tiny bit more creative. All of the modifications were performed in Adobe Photoshop 3. The operations (that I remember) are:

First, apply the "Dust and Scratches" filter to remove the dust-mites.
Apply an "Unsharp Mask" to try to get back some of the detail lost in the pervious step.
Move the bullet closer to the cigar, blending and smudging the edges of the paste to hide the join.
Crop the image
Convert to a duotone and add some blue (because I like blue).
Select the cloud and the bullet and fudge the levels up to brighten and bring out some detail.
Select the background above (and above-left) the cigar and bullet. This was too bright and drew my eyes. Fudge the levels down to try to improve the conposition a little.

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