Tag Archives: digitization

The quality of slide scans

Photo slides had completely disappeared off my radar until early 2008 when my father brought them over — along with a slide scanner he couldn’t figure out how to operate. I knew that someday I would revisit them with my trusty old Epson Perfection 3490 Photo flatbed scanner. What follows are my thoughts and experiences on the matter. Brace for impact! Continue reading

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Photo restoration through AI? Nope!

Despite the recent incredible developments in artificial intelligence and image generation, I remain steadfast that AI still has no role in the workflow for digitising personal snapshots on prints, slides or negatives. While I obviously made basic edits like cropping, or adjusting brightness, contrast, white balance and colours so that the viewer can actually see what’s going on in a photo, my experiences with AI services (read: face enhancing) have done nothing but confirm a phenomenon that’s already been termed “identity shift”. Continue reading

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AI Photo Enhancement: Boon or Bust for Old Photos?

Digitizing old family photos is a great way to preserve family history and memories for future generations. But let’s face it: old photos can be faded, scratched, and just plain old-looking. That’s where AI-powered photo enhancement software comes in. But is it really the panacea it’s cracked up to be? Continue reading

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Current status: Still sorting photos

It’s March 2023, and it’s been about one year since I started digitising my photo collection. What I hadn’t counted on was the amount of time that researching, naming, and sorting of the resultant scans would ultimately take. Continue reading

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Photography: What’s the point?

The photo fails as a historic document. It has no journalistic value or artistic merit. It is neither aesthetic nor is there an underlying message. While there is no doubt that it meant something to whoever pressed the shutter at that moment, this information is now, some forty years later, lost. Continue reading

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The obsolescence of family photo albums

Ah, the family photo albums! Those archivists of activities, those precious nuggets of nostalgia, those reminders of bad haircuts and even worse fashion sense that were cause for much delight when the parents had visitors over and they all gushed over pictures of babies of strangers whom they’ve never met and places nobody barely remembers. Family photos cover the spectrum from braggery from the curator’s perspective to voyeurism on the viewer’s part. Continue reading

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Welcome to 2019

We’re into a new year. 2019 is an extension to a new beginning. It’s a year full of anniversaries. New knowledge and skills shall be acquired. Let’s get cracking. Continue reading

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