My commitment is that I can make great slides from your great digital image. So the first thing to look at is the digital file. Is it great? Several things go into answering that question. Don't panic at the length of this article, some elements may not apply to your work, and most of them sound complex and intimidating the first time but soon become second nature.
First of all, is there enough of it? The film recorder will expand your image up to the full frame of the slide, then your projector will expand that up to the full size of your screen. Although we've run files as small as 640 x 480 pixels, the system is capable of far greater resolution than that. Zoom in on your image and see how well it holds up. If it only starts to look pixelated (blocky) at two or more zoom steps past full screen on your computer monitor, it will probably look fine to your audience. We recommend having an image of 1800 x 1200 for best results, but the Polaroid Palette actually does a surprisingly good job of scaling images up.
Does the image show what you want it to show? If there is detail in your art that doesn't show clearly in your digital image, it can't show up in the slide. If the image is blurred, either because it's out of focus or the camera wasn't held still on a tripod, the slide will be disappointing.
Does the image show the true colors of your work? Although monitors can vary significantly, most modern monitors are reasonably accurate although sometimes users have adjusted them badly. If the image on your screen looks like your work, the odds of the slide matching your work are pretty good. If in doubt, one or more of these pages will help you adjust your monitor without spending money on calibration hardware and software.
http://pages.prodigy.net/ecmorris/tips/monitor.htm
http://www.easyrgb.com/calibrate.php
http://www.ephotozine.com/techniques/viewtechnique.cfm?recid=12
http://www.pictopia.com/perl/doc?process=gamma_control
Don't get too excited about this element. I've never heard of an art show that brought out a colorimeter to confirm that a painting exactly matched the slides. A slide that reasonably represents the art is what's needed.
For some kinds of art, the edges of the piece need to be shown. When projected, the ideal is that everything surrounding the art is dead black, so the piece just hangs in space when projected. Having a big white border around the piece is distracting, particularly if the art is dark - the white border becomes the most intense visual in the darkened viewing room! To eliminate this, whether shooting film or digital, I hang the art in front of a curtain of black velvet. Although you have to be careful that this doesn't confuse the exposure meter, this is the fastest and easiest solution.
Note: Velvet isn't cheap. If there is a JoAnn Fabrics (www.joann.com) near you, get on their mailing list (you can sign up online). You'll get a flyer every month which normally includes a coupon for 40% off any one item. Use it to buy your black velvet backdrop! Or stop at a store, they may have copies of the current flyer on the counter. While other black fabrics will help, most will have some reflection and not get you the real separation you want.
If setting up a dead black backdrop isn't immediately possible, you can get there digitally. The first few times you do this will seem frustrating, tedious, and slow, but speed and confidence will come with a little practice. What you need to do is to open the image in your image editing software (Photoshop is the most common, but the same tools exist in every program) and select the background - everything that isn't your art. Then you fill that selection with black. The exception is textile art that has fibers hanging down out of the borders of the piece, you pretty much have to shoot those on black.
You'll want to have some contrast between the background and the edge of the quilt or other art, and the more even it is the easier it will be to select the background. There are two tools that are used for this, the magic wand and the lasso.
If you have decent contrast between the edge of the art and the background, choose the magic wand and click somewhere in the background. If you are very, very lucky, the entire background will be exactly selected, and nothing else. This doesn't happen often! The magic wand has a "tolerance" option. If you click on the background and only a few pixels are selected, you will want to increase the tolerance. If the selections includes part of your image, you'll want to decrease the tolerance. I normally run with the tolerance set to 16 (out of 255).
Click on an open area of the background. What normally happens is that a good chunk of background on one side is selected, but not all the way around. By holding down the Shift key you can click on an adjacent area, and the selection will include both areas. I normally find that I have to work my way around the image, selecting smaller and smaller parts of the background, until I get right up to the edge all the way around. I don't always get everything with the magic wand alone, but it can happen.
The second tool is the lasso. With this tool you click on a point in the image and then draw a line around an area. When you let up on the mouse button, the shape is closed. By holding the Shift key down, you can do this again and again until the entire selection is made. I often use the lasso to handle shadows just outside one part of a piece when the bulk of the selection has been made with the magic wand.
I make heavy use of the way the software closes the shape. Let's say I'm working on the right edge of the piece. I zoom in and click right on the edge, then move the pointer away from the art, then down a little, then back up to the edge, and then release the mouse button. The program draws a perfectly straight line between my starting and ending points. Depending on how smooth the edge of the piece is, I may do one side in three or four steps, or maybe in a couple of dozen, but once you get the hang of it it goes quickly.
If you go too far and select part of the art, you can Undo (Control/Command+Z) that change, or you can fine tune your selection from the other direction. Just like holding the Shift key down allows you to add to a selection, holding the Alt or Option key down allows you to subtract from it. The goal is to have the entire background selected at once, so don't panic if you go too far one way or the other, just calmly correct the current selection.
You may need to use the lasso tool alone in some cases. Just like there are images where the lasso isn't needed, where parts of the binding of a quilt exactly match the background the magic wand isn't used at all.
Once I have the entire background selected, go to the Select menu and choose Feather. I generally use a setting of 2 pixels. This smooths the transition between the art and the black background. It isn't strictly necessary but I think it's worth doing.
With the background selected and feathered, go to the Edit menu and choose Fill..., select Black, Opacity of 100%, and Normal, then click on OK. Voila! Your art is displayed on a perfect black background, that crack in your wall next to the left edge won't distract attention from your piece!
Now, we want to make the most use of the area of the slide, but we don't want the slide mount to cover up the edges. The first step is to set the background color to black. (I could show you how to do this, but I have no idea how to tell you. In Help you will find this under something like "background color, choosing".)
Select the marquee tool (the top left tool in the toolbar) and use it to crop the image down almost to the edge, concentrating on having the same amount of border on all sides. If your image isn't square to the edges, stop here and go to the Image menu, select Rotate Canvas, and select Arbitrary. You can rotate either direction in increments as small as a tenth of a degree. If you don't get it right at first, immediately undo it and increase or decrease your angle. You do not want to rotate one degree, then a half degree, then a quarter degree back, as each step very slightly degrades the image. Doing it once doesn't hurt, doing it three or four time will soften your edges.
Now that the image is surrounded by black, crop it close on all four sides. I find it's easiest for me to start at one corner, with the pointer well away from the art, and drag a marquee across to define the other two sides. For example, start at the upper left, carefully position the marquee to the lower right corner, lining up to both the right and bottom edges, and then go to the Image menu and select Crop. Then repeat from the bottom right, defining the left and top edges and cropping again. You should have an image which is filled by your art, with just slivers of black showing, probably a bit wavy on textile pieces.
Now go to the Image menu and select Canvas Size. In the New Size portion of the dialog you will have two numbers. Make sure they are both in pixels, then change those numbers to add 10%. You can copy (Control/Command+C) the number that is selected, then paste (Control/Command+V) that into the calculator and do the arithmetic there, then return to Photoshop and paste the new value in. Do this for both Width and Height, leave it anchored in the center, and click on OK. You now have a uniform black border around the entire work.
In many shows, the juries expect to see both the full image and a detail shot of each work. The detail shot will not need to have the black border created, the slight cropping by the slide mount will not affect the presentation. However, it is very common for cameras that automatically set exposure for the two images to have different, sometimes dramatically different, brightness. This can be disconcerting, leading the viewer to wonder which color is more accurate. You, as the artist, certainly do know which one to go with. At this point I have both the full image and the detail open together so I can easily switch back and forth between them or even set them side by side. Choosing the one you feel needs adjustment, go to the Image menu, select Adjust, and choose a tool. I normally use the Levels dialog, but the Brightness/Contrast control is simpler to use, and the Variations panel is often the easiest to learn. Real experts tend to use the Curve dialog. Showing you how to use any or all of these is beyond my current ambition, using the program's documentation, getting one of the many books out there, or searching for an online tutorial may be in order if the simples controls don't get you where you want to be. (Know of a good online resource for this? Tell me and earn free slides!)
One last step. We've found that though the system is very good at expanding images to fill the slide, sometimes oversized images have gotten soft when the system shrinks them to fit. Besides, images that are larger than needed take longer to transfer. Go to the Image menu and select Image Size. Again, if the dimensions aren't shown in pixels, change that. If the larger number is over 4096 or the smaller number is over 2730, we'll need to change them. Make sure that Constrain Proportions and Resample Image are both checked, and the mode is set to Bicubic. If the larger number is over 4096, change it to 4096. If the smaller number is still larger than 2730, change it to 2730. Click OK and save that file!
Unless you have a really fast connection for uploading, you will want to compress the file. Although I routinely save images for the web at Photoshop's JPEG quality level 4, that's very likely to introduce problems here. Do a Save As (Control/Command+Shift+S), specify the JPEG format if it's not already there, enter a new name (even if it's just to add -2 to the end), click OK. The next window will allow you to set the compression level. I normally use a value of 8 to 10, tending to go to the high end if there is a lot of detail. Pick a number, and click OK, then close the file and reopen it. Zoom in, particularly around areas of high contrast and detail, and see if the compression has damaged the appearance. If it has, go back to the previously saved file and do Save As again, this time with less compression (higher number). Again, close the file and reopen it to examine the quality. Whatever value you come up with here, it probably will work on all images of work in the same style so you won't have to be experimenting on every image.
Well, this document is longer than I planned. When I prepare files for conversion I do go through all this, but my fingers are something of a blur as I whip through the steps without even thinking about it. I guess that's why I'm surprised at the length, it's all become second nature after all these years. In other words, it sounds worse than it is. Just remember: Your files are ready to send, go on to 35mm slides from digital to upload your files and place your order.
For more information, or to comment on this page: vanhorn at whidbey.com
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