Stills to Paper

MichaelS wrote on 9/22/2007, 11:25 PM
I get into some of the darndest messes!

Monday, I will need to capture about 100 stills from a wedding video to print to paper. You guessed it...the photographer blew it! The video is full of really good shots, so selection will not be a problem.

I'm looking for an improved workflow that will better the quality. I'll have access to the original DV tapes (SD).

In the past, I've captured the still as a .png on the frame with the least obvious interlacing, pulled it into Photoshop, cropped, deinterlaced, adjusted levels, color, etc. and printed to high quality glossy paper. I plan to provide the lovely couple with the files, so they can have "photo" prints made at the corner drug store.

The inkjet prints will probably not exceed a 4"x6".

Can anyone offer suggestions as to how to make these low res pictures look better on paper. And while I have your attention, how do HDV captured stills look compared to printed SD pics? I would imagine much improved.

As always, thanks!

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 9/23/2007, 9:06 AM
> I'm looking for an improved workflow that will better the quality.

Set your Video Preview to Best (Full). Set your project Field Order to None (progressive scan). This way you don't need to deinterlace. Then add Track FX to color correct / adjust levels, etc. instead of using PhotoShop.

Now all you have to do is find the frame and press Save Snapshot to File and you're done.

> And while I have your attention, how do HDV captured stills look compared to printed SD pics?

There is no comparison. SD is 300K pixels (0.3MP (MegaPixels)) which is roughly 2.5"x3.5" print resolution at 200 DPI so printing them at 4"x6" is asking for a lot. HDV is 2 MP and you can easily get very high quality 5"x7" (which only require 1.4MP) or even 8x10.

~jr
rjkrash wrote on 9/23/2007, 7:07 PM
In addition to JohnnyRoy's suggestions might I recommend you look at Genuine Fractals. This product would allow you to resize and uprez the image captures to say 6inX4in at 250 dpi with no quality loss. If you can get a good quality capture you can print at a decent dpi.