Something To Do While Waiting For The Rangers

The Rangers play the Blue Jays in Arlington at 2pm, so to occupy my time till then. . .

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A Photographic Salvage Operation


Sometimes it seems I spend most of my time trying to organize the files on my computer. So it was this morning when I came across a folder of screen grabs that I had extracted from a DVD Maureen loaned me. It was someone's video of three of my sisters - Mary, Ellen, and Angela - visiting her family in Brooklyn. I don't think I noted the date, but I suspect they were in New York for Stephen and Maureen's wedding.

Given that that was 20-some years ago and most affordable video cameras were not even digital yet, the quality of the video - and the screen grabs - was pretty poor. The resolution was bad, and the color was worse. But the subject matter - my sisters - was captivating. They were obviously having a terrific time and it makes me a little jealous, having missed out on this particular delightful evening.

So I saved the series of screen grabs some time ago, not knowing exactly how I'd use them, but determined that I'd salvage something from this evening that I'd missed. At this point, I take a stab at it with Angela as my first subject. The screen grabs had caught several very typical expressions and seemed to me to capture the spirit of the evening. Therefore, I decided to choose 3 which, viewed together, showed Angela at her best.

The first thing I did was get rid of the color; I couldn't deal with the chromatic aberrations. The resolution was so poor that the image appeared poorly pixelated [not to be confused with the term as used in "Harvey"] and the exercise would boil down to a manual smoothing operation. I used the poster function in Picture Publisher which took care of the most egregious effects of pixelation and provided some initial smoothing. After that it was all manual. I limited my efforts to Angela's skin tones and the folds of her sweater, leaving the background posterized. When I was done, I adjusted the contrast to match in the three images and, finally, I aligned them as a single image and shifted the hue to approximate a sepiatone.

Click for a larger image.

 Obviously, I'm pleased with the outcome of this exercise, so don't be surprised to find Ellen and Mary in similar triptychs here on Whiskey Papa in future. I may have to borrow Maureen's DVD again and take more care in choosing my screen grabs. But just remember, all this makes Bill happy and keeps him off the streets.