Jaymee's getting married!

Jaymee Ong is getting married at the end of this month! I know Jaymee has tons of fans all over the world, so I took the liberty to scan this newspaper article (The New Paper, 21 March 2009) for all of you. Click on the graphic on the left for a bigger copy of the scan.

Sorry for the crappy quality of the scan, but it's scanned from a newspaper after all. I tried to clean it up some and make it more presentable :)

Congratulations Jaymee! It's great to finally find somebody you truly love to spend the rest of your life together. Here's wishing all the best to the happy couple.

Fann Wong in Citta Bella April 2009

A set of 3 scans of Fann Wong has just been released. As usual, you can grab 'em here.

I like this particular photoshoot. It's a different look for her, and I do think she looked gorgeous in this set of photos. Hard to believe that she's close to pushing 40 eh? :)

Incidentally, this shoot was shot by the ubermeister himself, Wee Khim. I can usually spot his style straight away: Clean, uncluttered backgrounds, models with immaculate make up and classy poses. He makes beautiful women even more beautiful - the simplicity of his props only serve to highlight the model, with no distractions or compromises.

In my opinion, he shoots the best pics of Fann Wong - she always looked dazzling in all of his shoots. My advice to Fann on her upcoming wedding? Get Wee Khim to shoot your wedding. It's an important milestone in your life, girl, and you deserve to look your best! :)

Felicia Chin

I just released a set of 3 scans of Felicia Chin. Grab them here.

I first saw Felicia Chin in a FHM Singapore photoshoot many, many years ago. I forgot the exact year, but I probably still have that mag around somewhere.

Truth be told, she wasn't particularly memorable then. The poses were uninspiring. Same goes for the makeup and general photography. Her hairstyle was awful - she looked like a boy! The entire shoot was dark and dingy - what, they cannot afford lighting? I dunno what criteria the local FHM has for its local photographers, but since it's a "lad's mag", shouldn't the girls at least appear to be more glamorous?


All that changed around 2006. She appeared in the Vitagen ads. Then I saw her Silkygirl (a Malaysian cosmetics brand) ads. Damn, that's when I really paid attention. Great smile, nice teeth, fresh faced. Maybe it's her new hairdo. Or maybe she found better photographers :) She's also got the cutest nose!

Exotique by Ballistic Publishing

Well, I was over at Kinokuniya Bookstores at Takashimaya Shopping Centre over the weekend. Kinokuniya was having their periodic 20% member discount, and I always make it a point to visit when they have their promotions :) And if you're not a member, I highly recommend you apply. Kinokuniya has all kinds of rare and hard to find books, including some of the "naughty" Taschen publications. The regular member discount is 10%, but I usually wait for the 20% specials :)

Normally the place would be jammed pack with people when they have the promotion, but it was strangely quiet. They seemed to be expecting a hefty crowd, too, judging from the barricades set up by the cashiers to control the queues. Perhaps everyone was off to the IT Show 2009 - apparently the huge crush of people over there was a sight to behold.

Well, I bought some books, including this particular one, Exotique 4.

I have always been a sucker for fantasy illustration books. I love Luis Royo, Soroyama and Matsumune Shirow.

This book is a beauty. Jammed pack with full colour, high quality prints - it featured the best fantasy artists from around the globe, including China, Indonesia & Taiwan. I thoroughly enjoyed looking through the book - my only regret was that they printed some of the best images as a double-page spread. With the bloomin' separation at the centre (it is a thick book), it's hard to look at the print (as well as almost impossible to scan, heh)

Here's the publisher's website. You can even "preview" the books there.

If I find the time, I may scan some of the images from the book. Good stuff

Olivia Ong

Well, I was at the IT Show 2009, and when I passed by the Sennheiser booth, a SYT (sweet young thing) pressed a Sennheiser brochure to my hands. I was just about to toss it when I saw Olivia Ong on the back cover :)

This is the scan of the back cover of the brochure. I thought about getting rid of the text, but then I'm stuck with the bloomin' blue box blocking a chunk of her body. So what the hell, the text stayed. I liked Sennheiser products anyway :)

For those not in the know, Olivia Ong is a local singer. I like her songs. She's pretty (in a girl-next-door kind of way), has a sweet smile, alluring eyes and fabulous legs :)

It's nice to see her with some flesh - I really do think she looks better this way. She looked awfully thin in some of her recent photo-shoots.

You can get the full sized scan that was just released here.

In the meantime, enjoy one of her music videos:

I bought a new camera!

I dabble in photography, and the Fuji F200EXR is one of the few cameras released within the last few years that has got me excited.

It's not about the features, though the Fuji F200 EXR has got them in spades. It's also not a all singing, all dancing D-SLR - it's "only" a humble point and shoot. Nope, the thing that got me excited is the new Fuji EXR sensor, which promises better dynamic range, superior noise control and consequently, better looking images.

For far too long, the marketing for digital cameras have followed the "megapixel" path. It's an easy concept for consumers to grasp; the higher the megapixels, the "better" the camera must be. That's true to a point. What those marketers don't tell you that cramming more pixels into those tiny sensors found in P & S cameras yield rapidly diminishing marginal benefits.

It isn't rocket science. More pixels in a small sensor means ever smaller pixels. That has unfavourable implications for light sensitivity, noise, and overall image quality. Pumping up the megapixel count has always struck me as a "lazy" way to sell cameras. It's about time for other innovations to come up to drive digital photography forward.

This is the marketing blurb from Fuji:

Faced with a market driven by the demand for higher pixel counts, yet conscious that high concentrations of pixels on small sensors can produce diminishing quality returns, Fujifilm engineers had a radical rethink about sensor technology. Why not make a sensor that can flex its behaviour according to the scene to be photographed? Why not give full resolution when bright light allows, but use the pixels in a different way when the light is not ideal? The FinePix F200EXR offers 3 switchable modes in one sensor:

High Resolution mode, which deploys all twelve million pixels, and is designed to offer the finest detail of intricate subjects when light is full and even;

High Sensitivity and Low Noise mode, which caps two adjacent pixels together to produce 6 million large photodiodes, which are big enough to absorb light in the darkest of conditions, to produce low-light shots of extraordinary quality with minimal noise and grain; and

Wide Dynamic Range mode, which captures different exposures with two sets of six million pixels, which, when combined, gives an excellent level of detail in highlights that would otherwise be lost.

In EXR Mode, the photographer can choose which sensor setting is preferable for the subject to be photographed by choosing High Resolution Priority (HR) to maximise resolution, High ISO and Low Noise Priority (SN) for high quality low-light work or D-Range Priority (DR) for the best detail with contrasty subjects.

Sounds fancy. So how does it work in practice? I set the camera to "full auto" and went about taking some photos. The images below are all straight from the camera with no adjustments whatsoever, save for resizing, cropping and minor sharpening:



F9.0 @ 1/90s
ISO 100
EXR Auto - Landscape mode

A super high contrast screen taken at noon. Such a scene would trip up most cameras and would even pose a challenge to the sophisticated matrix metering of top-end D-SLR's. There is still nice detail in the shadows - check out the road tile pattern in the right foreground.


F3.3 @ 1/180s
ISO 100
EXR Auto - Landscape mode

Very clean, sharp and well exposed. Pleasing, vibrant colours.


F5.1 @ 1/480s
ISO 100
EXR Auto - Landscape mode

The 5x optical zoom don't reach very far at all. The bird does not fill the frame. However, exposure was spot on, and the bird was well exposed despite the dark waters and the light coloured steps. Both the dark and light areas still retain excellent detail, and is a testament to the wide dynamic range of the new sensor.


F 5.1 1/480s
ISO 100
EXR Auto - Landscape mode

No biggie. With 12 megapixels to play with, you can afford to crop and still get nice quality pictures. This is a close up crop of the bird picture above.


F3.3 @ 1/100s
ISO 1600 (!)
Program mode

This is a snap shot of the mad-cap circus that is the annual IT-Show (2009) held in Suntec City, Singapore. I must draw your attention to the ISO set by the camera for this picture. ISO 1600!! Holy smokes, most P&S cameras can't take very good pictures above ISO 400. The more adventurous ones that offered ISO 1600 usually result in a blurry, splotchy mess, more akin to abstract water-colour paintings than photographs.

The photo is a little on the dark side, but the noise, though visible is not too objectionable. It's a perfectly serviceable and usable photograph. Note that the picture was taken handheld without the use of flash. This does bode well for the low light performance of the new Fuji sensor.


F3.@ 3 1/60s
ISO 400
Program mode

A remarkably clean picture at ISO 400. Remarkably clean for a Point & Shoot, that is. There is only a hint of noise, and it's only visible in the dark areas of the photo. An excellent performance.

Thus far I am impressed. Now that Fuji has thrown down the gauntlet, let's hope other camera manufacturers get off their asses and come up with better innovations. Good times for digital photographers.

The album to the larger sized pictures can be found here.

Jaymee Ong - Certified Yoga Instructor

Jaymee certainly has been keeping busy ever since she returned from the States. She has been hosting TV programs, modeling (Yay! That means more pictures :)), and now she's a certified yoga instructor! She's conducting classes at True Yoga, and here's a picture of a very ripped looking Jaymee performing an uncomfortable looking Yoga-ish pose ^-^ She certainly is very flexible :)

The "dao" of Scanning & Retouching

I have been scanning and retouching for close to 15 years. What a wonderful hobby this is - I am still learning new things and techniques all the time, either from experimenting, or looking at other scannist’s works. If there’s one thing I can impart is this….keep practicing! Practicing improves your technique. Practicing improves your scans. And remember this: No matter how good you think you are, there will ALWAYS be somebody better than you. This attitude should keep you from getting too complacent :)

The following ramblings do not contain any specific “how-to’s”. It merely contains some of the general principles I follow when retouching my scans.

OK, the basics: what constitutes a good scan? In my humble opinion, a good scan has the following qualities:

1. Clarity
2. Colour fidelity
3. Sharpness

Come to think of it, a good scan has pretty much the same qualities as a well-taken photograph :)

Clarity
How do you define scan clarity? The clarity of any scan depends on the following:

a. exposure (good contrast and dynamic range)
b. colour vibrancy
c. Overall cleanliness of the scan.

The first 2 points are pretty much self-explanatory. At the very minimum, use the levels command in Photoshop to ensure proper contrast so that your colours don’t wash out and your midtones don’t burn out. Another important tip is to calibrate your monitor. In fact, this is the first thing you should do! If your monitor isn’t well calibrated, the scan may look fine on your screen, but may look washed out or too dark on another person’s screen. I calibrate my screen to sRGB (colour temperature 6,500K, gamma 2.2). That way I am sure my scan looks the way I intended on the majority of screens out there. Most recent monitors have a variety of colour temperature settings – 6,500K would generally be the sRGB standard.

Cleanliness of the scan refers to the degree of “noise” present. As anyone who scan knows, noise is inevitable when you scan from magazines. It comes from the half-tone printing used in magazine printing. If your scanner is not up to scratch, you also get moiré….those ugly checkerbox patterns or discolorations in the picture. The techniques you use to reduce these noise to acceptable levels can take up several chapters in a book. Choose whatever you’re comfortable with, because, in my opinion, noise is what breaks or makes a scan. The degree of noise present show how much effort a particular scannist puts into the retouching. This does not mean that your picture must be smooth as glass…..just that noise should not be at objectionable levels (a fine line). I sometimes add in some noise to my scans (just to add some character, heh heh).

Finally, look critically at the overall picture. Most people spend all of their effort in getting rid of noise in the skin, but somehow neglect the background, for example. Some folks also neglect to clone out imperfections, like dust spots, page creases etc. Such lack of attention in the smaller details somehow makes a scan “incomplete”.

Colour Fidelity
Skin tones. Some folks get real uptight about this one. They have fixed ideas on a particular skin tone or colour and retouch all their scans to that ideal. Me, I’m not that extreme. As long as I feel comfortable with the colour, I’m happy.

What to do, then? Well, learn to retouch according to the context. Human skin is like canvas, it reflects environmental lighting. For example, pictures taken during a sunset gives a lovely, reddish, orangish warm tone to the skin. Similarly, pictures taken under trees in the shade will give a slight green tint to skin tones. Just bear the context in mind, so you don’t end up retouching skin tones that does not match with the environment. That would be jarring, to say the least.

When in doubt, just base your retouch with the original source material as a guide. Don’t retouch just for the sake of retouching!



Noise, begone with ye!
When getting rid of noise, don’t forget to work on the background! Grainy, unretouched backgrounds make a scan look incomplete.

For this particular scan of Heidi Klum, I masked out the background, and floated it on a separate layer. I then applied a small guassian blur filter to smoothen out the grain, and then enhanced the saturation (through levels) of the background. It takes a little more effort but the overall result and effect is worth it. :)

Sharpness
Pretty much self-explanatory, and the final step of the retouch process. The scanning process, retouching and finally resampling the raw scan to the finished copy makes the scan soft and blurry. Careful sharpening can really bring out all the hidden details. There are chapters in Photoshop books dedicated to the application of the unsharp filter. Experiment and find out the technique you like best. Remember not to oversharpen! Just remember this…..an unsharpened scan is an incomplete scan, period.


How’s this for sharpness?
Though you can’t see it in this greatly reduced picture, but you can practically count the threads and see the weave pattern on Rebecca Tan's pink dress.

Never underestimate the power of sharpening to bring out the details!

The sharpening process in turn causes noise – so leave the sharpening as the very last step in your retouching process.

Some Tips On Retouching
If you’re truly serious about retouching, get a graphic tablet! A mouse is great for many things, but fine selection and drawing is not one of them. A basic graphic tablet shouldn’t cause an arm and leg. A good, basic one costs about S$150-200. No name brands from Taiwan can cost half (or more) of that price. I use Wacom, not because their tablets look cool (they do), but because it’s fast and responsive. They are excellent value for money. Nothing spoils your mood faster than by using a laggy (and cheap) tablet.



Get a tablet like the one here (which I’m also using) and see your productivity skyrocket! Masking and selection that used to be incredibly twitchy (not to mention frustating) using the mouse is now a cinch.

Now retouching is how it should be….fun, instead of tedium.

Chinese New Year!

Yeah, I know The Year of the Ox is over now for a couple of months, but whatever :)

I have been doing scans commemorating Chinese New Year for a number of years now. I guess you could call it somewhat of a dScans tradition :) Most folks seemed to like it, so I plan to keep doing it.



This is my very first CNY scan all the way back in 2002, featuring the delectable Denise Keller. Wow, 2002. It means I have been doing it for 7 years now. Time does fly doesn't it?



Here's the latest one released for CNY 2009, The Year of the Ox. Ann Kok is the model here, and what a beautiful gal she is. I have a soft spot for Ann, and it's a pity she's so under-rated as an actress. I just love those dimples!

And like they say, what's a post without some goodies? Here's 2 un-released scans from 2002. Since it was the first time I was doing it, I was experimenting with backgrounds, layout and whatnot. I'm glad to say it got a whole lot easier as the years went on :)

Vivian Hsu

This set was released a few days ago. You can get the scans from the archive here.

If anyone has discovered the secret of eternal youth, it surely must be this lovely lady. I still remember her very first photobook, and she didn't look as if she aged much since then. If anything she looks even more beautiful.

The last 2 pictures were double page spreads in the magazine. The pages were carefully torn from the magazine, scanned individually, and merged in photoshop. I decided to give myself a challenge and see how big an image I can get and still look good. Typically, magazine scans do not look good at larger sizes - at higher resolutions, artefacts like moire, grain or editing artefacts show up even more clearly. The last 2 images were almost 3,000 pixels wide before I decided it was getting ridiculous and I resampled them down to about 2,000 pixels wide.

I thought the results looked pretty good. What do you guys think? :)

Welcome!

Welcome to The Accidental Scannist, my very first blog! (So be gentle, dear readers :))

Here I will post my latest scan releases, together with comments about the subject matter and the techniques used to retouch the image. I currently release my scans via email through my Yahoo group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dscans) and my Google group (http://groups.google.com.group/dscans), and this is a little impersonal. I hope to use this blog as a means to interact with some of the folks that collect my scans. We'll see how it goes :)

Comments, are of course, most welcomed.