Digital to the rescue! As the digital revolution becomes less revolutionary and more evolutionary, its practical value increases, affecting even the more mundane aspects of club activity, such as its newsletter - Club Newsletters

My club, although very active, is not large so we must make do with a newsletter that is printed in black & white (B&W) and photocopied (6 pages and 60 copies per issue). However, since this is a camera club publication, photographs are important. To this end, the newsletter incorporates B&W photographs at a resolution of 200 dpi at their intended printed size, and then half-toned using a postscript printer at a screen frequency of 65 lines per inch. As a result the photographs reproduce very well, even using this simple photocopying process.

In the newsletter, we try to include B&W versions of the placing slides from the competitions we hold each month. In the past we have tried borrowing the winning slides, scanning them, and then dropping out the color and adjusting their size and resolution in Photoshop[R]. However, since some members are reluctant to let their slides out of their hands, and others are not present for the judging, it is not always possible to borrow all of the slides. Also, things are pretty hectic after judging due to meeting room clean up and other responsibilities.

After purchasing a Minolta Dimage 7 digicam and with nothing to lose, I tried photographing the screen while the judge was commenting on the six placing slides. Much to my surprise, it worked! The only immediate problem occurred when the slides changed from vertical to horizontal or vice versa. The camera was on a tripod, mounted on a traditional ball-and-socket head with the customary slit in the side to switch formats. However, it was difficult to "find" the slit in the dark, so I replaced it with a Novoflex 'MagicBall" head that solved the problem. No slit, no fumbling!

In order to be able to recompose quickly between formats, I also learned not to try filling the frame with the screen image. In other words, I include the whole screen and then some. The unwanted border can be cropped out in Photoshop.

Photographing the screen did not interfere in the judging process and I didn't have to track down the slides from the owners after the judging was over. There was, however, another problem. Since I had to position myself to one side of the projector, every image I took was skewed, some more than others. This, too, was dealt with in Photoshop.

Figure 1 shows the basic process. The image on the left is typical, showing both the black border resulting from not trying the fill the frame, and the keystoning due to the position of the camera. The middle image shows the result of rectangular cropping. The border is gone but the thin black triangles from the keystoning remain. I then select the image (Ctrl-A) and use the Edit-Transform-Skew sequence of commands in Photoshop to deskew the image. The result is shown on the bottom. The image is then resized at a resolution of 200 ppi and saved.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

It is sometimes difficult to determine just where the border of the image is for cropping and keystone removal. An example is shown in the left image of Figure 2. This is a soft-focus, hazy image with very black borders. So, where to crop? Go to Windows--Show Layers and double-click on the Background layer. Then, in the resulting dialog box, click OK. The layer will be renamed "Layer 0" and it will no longer be locked. Select the little arrow on the upper right and select Duplicate Layer. This layer will be named, "Layer 0 copy." On Layer 0, click the empty box to the left and a link icon will display letting you know this layer is linked to the Layer 0 copy.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Selecting the Layer 0 copy layer, I then go to the Image-Adjust-Levels (Ctrl-L) command sequence and move the middle slider to the left to make the image light enough to see its true borders (image second from left in Figure 2). I then do a rectangular crop (third image from left), select the image (Ctrl-A), and follow with the Edit-Transform-Skew sequence (fourth image from left) to de-skew. The lightened copy enables me to see where the borders are and to make my selections accordingly.

The final step is to delete the Layer 0 copy layer (right image). Although the cropping and de-skewing are done looking at the lightened Layer 0 copy layer, the editing operations are duplicated precisely on the underlying image.

At this point I remove the color by going to the Image-Adjust-Channel Mixer sequence of commands, checking the "Monochrome" box and adjusting the red, green, and blue sliders to obtain an optimal B&W image. (I have kept the figures in this article in B&W because color is not at issue here.) Lastly, the size and resolution of the image are adjusted before saving.

A typical example of a newsletter page showing all 12 winners for the month (6 for Pictorial and 6 for Nature) is shown in Figure 3. To get all 12 on a page, the image size on the longest side is generally about 2-1/2 inches, but if a particular image is to be featured, it can be saved as a larger image in Photoshop.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Even at these small sizes, the photographs are well defined and serve four important purposes: (1) They give members who were not in attendance on the competition night a good idea of what the winners looked like; (2) Since we use our newsletter as a recruiting device, they also give non-members a sense of what winning entries look like; (3) They provide a useful record for the winners to keep and to show to others; and (4) They provide a historical record of club growth and accomplishment.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Photographic Society of America, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group