On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:43:54 GMT, "Jason Albertson"
wrote:

I like to print photos of images I've taken during planetary imaging
sessions. I have been printing images for several years, but I always have
the same problem: I can't seem to see the noise very well until after an
image is printed. Many, many times I have wasted initial prints because
noise rears its ugly head in the image. Then I have to go back and try to
gaussian blur the image at the risk of loosing sharpness when the image is
reprinted. My question is this: is there any easy way to see noise in
images before they are printed? If I zoom in 200% or better and readjust
brightness/ contrast, this helps somewhat, but I am usually still
disappointed once the image is printed. There must be a better way of
seeing/ predicting noise that will show up in photos. Any help would be
greatly appreciated.

I'm a bit suspicious of your display system. Any reasonable monitor has
more dynamic range than a print, and should show noise better. I usually
see subtle noise on the screen that doesn't show up in prints, not the
other way around. Of course, you should be working at 100% for all
critical processing (not 200%, at least not in Photoshop). Is your
monitor reasonably calibrated with a gradient scale, such that you
aren't losing range off one end or the other? In Photoshop, you should
be able to see the difference between a black and a 95% K region, and
you should also be able to tell the difference between a white and a 5%
K region. You should never have to adjust the brightness or contrast
away from what matches your output.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com