I'm sure that I'm going date myself by referring back to the early sixties. None the less, it was back in my high school years when I was first introduced to photo processing while enrolled in a graphic arts course. I remember the school's dark room filled with expensive processing equipment, developing trays and large dark bottles of chemicals. We were only capable of developing and printing black and white photographs but the possibility of doing something like this in my parent's home was well out of the reach of their or my pocket book.
A few years later, early in my Air Force career, I had the opportunity to visit the base photo hobby shop. Unlike my high school, this hobby shop had the capability to process color photographs. However, color photo processing was even more complicated, required additional sophisticated equipment and chemicals and, of course, was more expensive.
Today, just a little more than three decades later, it's a different story. Little by little over the past couple of years I've watched the technical capabilities come together, the prices come down, and the appropriate software and hardware interfaces for our Atari computer become a reality. I now have a photo lab in my house, a digital color photo lab on my Atari. Just what are the major pieces one requires to do digital color photography and processing at home? To answer this question, I visited the public library and did a little research. Using the reference terminal, I did a search on digital photography which quickly yielded five books on the subject. Of these five, one was a dictionary of terms used in digital image processing, two books were already checked out but the remaining two were what I was looking for.
The books were; Digital Photography, by Mikkel Aaland with Rudolph Burger, printed in 1992 and Digital Imaging for Visual Artists, by Sally Wiener Grotta and Daniel Grotta, printed in 1993. There are more current books on the subject but these weren't that dated either. Actually, digital color photography and processing has been around for years. Thanks to the personal computer, he capabilities have continued to grow while the prices have continued to decline.
Starting with the computer, one basically needs good computational power, sufficient memory, a large hard drive, and good graphics. In addition, you should have the hardware and software interfaces for a color flatbed scanner, CD ROM drive (CD-R/W drive is better), color photo-quality printer and, of course, a digital camera. One also needs the appropriate software to support color photo processing. Typically one will use image processing programs, image format conversion programs and paint/art programs.
In my case, for my Atari system, the last of the
applicable pieces came together just this past year. This included
the affordable Epson Stylus Pro photo-quality color printer, the Microtec
E-3 color flatbed scanner with the Scan X Atari driver form Homa Systems
House (www.magmacom.com/~nima/), and the Casio digital color camera with
the Casio QV Atari interface from Parx (unfortunately,now defunct).
Also, 1998 promises to bring the CD-R capability to our Atari systems with
the upgrade to ExtenDOS Gold from Anodyne Software (www.cyberus.ca/~anodyne).
The computational power of our Atari systems has always been good, especially
the Falcon and the TT's with a graphics card. In addition, the new high
powered clones such as the Hades (Direct T40 and T60 systems), the
Afterburner 040 for the Falcon and the ability to run Atari software on
the Mac and PC's with the various emulator programs and the Magic operating
system have provided plenty of horsepower to do color photography and processing
comparable to the mainstream PC and Mac world.
Our Atari computer systems have had the capability to display photos that were digitized and stored in the various file formats (GIF, JPG, TIF, TGA, etc) almost from the beginning. Hand and flatbed scanning has also been available for years on our Atari systems. Early in 1997 ,the color flatbed scanners broke through the less than $200 barrier and are already heading below the $100 barrier. Software like Scan X ($50) for our Atari systems will help make color flatbed scanning as common as having a CD ROM drive. Scan X is not the only color flatbed scanner driver for our Atari systems. Look II supports the Epson scanners, there are also drivers for the HP and Mustek scanners and there are even some applications ( e.g. Photoline, Calamus) which allow interfacing to a flatbed scanner via a built in driver interface. I'm going to briefly look at the Scan X driver for this article. It's interface is graphical, simple and very intuitive (the users manual doesn't even take up a full double sided 8.5 x11 sheet).
One important point in doing any scanning is selecting the correct resolution to scan at. Just remember, the higher the resolution the more memory the scanned file will require. Digitized color scans can be very large. A simple 3 x 5 photos can easily be several megabytes if scanned at 300 dots per inch (dpi) using 24 bit color. Don't be too alarmed though, one does not have to scan at 300 dpi to achieve good results.
The book, Digital Photography, provides a simple formula for determining scanning dpi. The scanned dpi is based on twice the ratio of the desired output image size to the original size times the output resolutions used in the display media. For example, to display a 3 x 5 photo at the same size on my color monitor which is 75 dpi, I would only need to scan the photo at 2 x 3/3 x 75=150 dpi. If I wanted to display it at twice the size it would be 2 x 6/3 x 75=300 dpi. If I am going to output my scan to my Epson Stylus Pro color printer at 720 dpi then you can see that my required scanned dpi by this formula is 1440 for a 3 x 5 printout. This exceeds my scanners capability by a significant amount but all is not really lost. Using the special photo-quality printer paper, I've been able to take a 3 x 5 color photo, scanned at 300 dpi, and blow it up to an 8.5 x 11 printout at 720 dpi with very little loss of detail and resolution. The ink jet technology used in the Epson Stylus Pro along with the special paper still provide beginners like me with very good prints.
Color brightness, contrast and exposure are the other adjustments that Scan X allows one to make during a scan. Scanning speed is also controllable as is the ability to backtrack. Essentially, the slower you scan the more accurate the scan will be. Backtracking simply improves the accuracy of your scan. Scan X also provides a prescan capability and cropping. This feature allows you to crop and scan only the area of the photo you are interested. You can also scan in a positive or a negative, 24 bit color, gray scale, line art and half scale modes. The output scan is saved in TGA or IMG formats for black and white.
The other interface that just became available this past summer for the Atari is the Cassia Q.V. digital camera interface from Parx in France. The general cost of a digital camera, like the flatbed color scanner, started to drop in 1997. The Cassia QV10 digital camera dropped below $300 around June. In the same month, Atari Computing magazine advertised the Parx Casio QV package for the Atari computer (approximately $95) .
While initially looking at purchasing the QV10 model camera, I noticed that the QV120 camera was also on sale for only $349 and bought it instead. The main difference in these two models is the resolution. The QV10 only provides 320 x 240 pixel resolution where as the QV 120 provides this resolution and 640 x 480 pixel resolution.
I ordered and received my Atari interface software and serial cable from Parx a couple of weeks after I purchased the camera. The program was in French but also came with UK text files and resource files. After a couple of embarrassing start up problems regarding how to change the resource file to provide English displays, (Parx provided me the help via e-mail) everything worked just as advertised.
The Parx QV interface is through the serial port. The special serial cable is included with their software interface kit. My QV120 camera came with a serial cable with adapters for both the Windows based PC's and the Mac along with software for both systems. My daughter has a Windows based PC so I've installed the cable and software on her system and have compared the performance with my Atari system. The Parx software interface is very simple and straight forward and is functionally the same as what is on the PC and Mac interface. The Casio camera has its own 16 Mbit flash memory and can store up to 96 images (320 x 240) or 32 images (640 x480). Your stored images are then individually selectable though the software interface for downloading. The images are in a CAM format which you then can convert to GIF, JPG and most other standard image processing formats using the software provided in the Parx kit. Programs like Image Copy can also be used to convert to other common image formats.
The speed at which the images are transferred from the camera via the serial interface and placed in memory in the CAM format is dependent on the processing power of your system. At first I had the interface installed on my Falcon system but now I have moved it to my T60. The horsepower of the 68060 really makes a noticeable difference. The Falcon was comparable to the performance of my daughter's 100 mhz Pentium Casio interface, but the T60 is probably 5 to 10 times faster. The old 1040ST can be used, but a Falcon or TT will be better and the high end clones and emulators will be even better.
The Casio QV120 camera uses a fixed focus lens with a macro position (F2.8/f=4.2mm). It has an F2.8/F8 manually switchable aperture with focal lengths from as close as 11 cm in the macro setting to the normal 0.5 meter to infinity in the normal setting. It has a built in color LCD backlighted viewfinder/playback display which you to also review the shots you have stored in it's flash memory. The camera also has a built in 10 second timer. The shutter speed is electronic and provides 1/8 to 1/4000 second shutter speeds. Indoor photography is possible without a flash but I found low light performance to not be very good. There is an optional indoor light system that can be purchased for the camera. Another aspect you really need to consider with the Casio digital camera is battery consumption. The camera requires 4 AA batteries and it will consume them in short order during your photo sessions and downloading to the computer. The users manual estimates battery life of 150 continuous minutes for alkaline and 250 continuous minutes for lithium. I highly recommend buying the AC adapter.
Personally, getting used to looking at an LCD viewfinder instead of looking through an optical lens was an adjustment with this digital camera. But being able to shoot a picture and then review what you just shot is one of the advantages a digital camera provides. You can quickly review and delete what you don't like and then shoot again. Of course, for me, being able to download my photo session into the computer and work on them with an image processing program is where the fun really begins.
There are several very good image processing programs available for our Atari computer systems. and each application is probably a complete review article. Photoline from Homa Systems House is one of the more expensive releases at $189 but is loaded with features and capabilities. I recommend you read the review of Photoline by David Barkin in the July/August 1996 issue of Current Notes for more details on this excellent program. Positive Image from the Floppy Shop is another excellent image processing program. The beta version was reviewed by Frank Charlton in the October 1995 edition of ST Format. David Barkin also discussed DA's Repro, DA's Picture, True Image and Studio Photo in his Running out of Ram column in the January/February 1996 edition of Current Notes. David also did a very enjoyable article on digital photography in the November/December 1995 edition of Current Notes. Other programs that are useful in digital photography and processing include; Image Copy, Style 2 and Apex Media (Falcon only). Of course this is not an exhaustive list but as you can see there is a good selection of applications available for our Atari systems.
In summary, color digital photography and processing
can be done on an Atari computer. One needs good computational capability
(Falcon, TT or T60), sufficient memory, a large hard drive, and good graphics.
You should also have the hardware and software interfaces to support a
color flatbed scanner, CD ROM drive, color photo-quality printer and, of
course, the digital camera. One also requires the appropriate application
software such as; image processing programs, image format conversion programs
and paint/art programs. Photo quality color printers are affordable
and many work very well on the Atari computer systems. Color flatbed scanners
are also very affordable along with the software interfaces, such
as Scan X, for our Atari computers. Last, the introduction of the Parx
Casio QV interface, essentially completes all of the hardware and software
interfaces needed to do color digital photography and processing on our
Atari computer.