Coin photography - a short Photoshop tutorial.

coinpictures

I posted this over on the Darkside, but figured that some folks here might find it useful as well.

Keep in mind that this is just the way *I* do things; there is no right or wrong method.

Over 3MB of large pictures; my apologies to dialup users...

Coins and Photoshop done my way.

MORGANHUNTER2

Looks complicated to say the least of it.

coin in hand-

coinpictures

Depends on your perspective and experience.

I find attempting to get to that same end result solely through photography alone a MUCH more daunting challenge...

Some may find the information useful, and others not at all.

*shrug*

MORGANHUNTER2

I read what you posted- all I'm trying to say is that is a LOT of work for a photo.

I don't have the adobe program- so I can't honestly say it is difficult or not, but the process looks time consuming.

JrGMan2004

<< <i>Looks complicated to say the least of it.

coin in hand- >>

Some of the steps can be skipped with a properly set camera... most of my pictures come out of the camera ready to be displayed after cropping... some of the stuff he's done in his step-by-step is adjusting for white balance, but that can be easilly done with any decent camera instead of doing it in photoshop

IrishMike

It really isn't complicated, I don't use all your steps but I find after intially cropping the image I then crop out the background before I tweak the colors using the circle cropping tool. It helps me to get a truer color of the coin not influenced by the slab or other background. I use the paint bucket to choose the background color before I save all the tweaking I have done. All you described is now available in photoshop elements. 4.0 at a cost of $80-$100.

Thanks for sharing your tips.

Gemineye

I have posted a few coins on the forum and NEVER haver altered their appearance to show anything but what the camera lens shows...............

Fairlaneman

All of the tweaking in the world will only make a coin look good on another persons monitor only if it is calibrated the same as the tweakers monitor. I proved this to myself when a new monitor was purchased.

Ken

ziggy29

<< <i>All of the tweaking in the world will only make a coin look good on another persons monitor only if it is calibrated the same as the tweakers monitor. I proved this to myself when a new monitor was purchased. >>

Yeah. I first noticed that when I used image editing software to make the image look as much like the actual coin as possible in terms of color and such.

But when I viewed the image on another computer, and with another monitor, the difference was surprising.

nwcs

Few extra thoughts: Photoshop CS2 has some extra features. You can fix lens blur more easily, correct for lens angles, etc. Also I tend to avoid auto contrast and things. The approach I found that works the best is to switch to LAB mode, 16 bit color and then add a curves adjustment layer.

Also a must is to have properly calibrated monitor and white balance adjusted correctly on the initial picture.

PS: Don't use the save to web in photoshop. It will reduce your pic to a smaller pallete of colors that work across the platforms. Since 90% of the people use Windows, save as a regular jpeg with high quality to get good results.

SamByrd

Good post, I found the info helpful and will be able to use photo shop a little better now.

ER

Another example why I like this place.

MikeInFL

Having to use Photoshop to heavily modify your picture just means you didn't do such a good job when you took the photo.

In general, getting it right in-camera will result in a better photo than having to correct things in Photoshop.

Shooting in RAW gives you much more latitude in post processing as the corrections are not as obvious as those done in Photoshop, but all things being equal getting it right in the camera will produce better photos...Mike