Faststone, Gimp and Irfanview 2018 Bob McMicken - Forensic-Photography.Com

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1 Faststone, Gimp and Irfanview 2018 Bob McMicken - Forensic-Photography.Com Back when real men carried revolvers and real cars had carburetors, people wanting to master the finer points of photography shot color slides which allowed no margin for error. Today, if you want to acquire skills above the smartphone and Facebook level, you need to edit and print your own digital photographs. Advanced photographers spend $ a year to subscribe to Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography Plan which includes the latest version of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. Unless you're a quick study, you might need to sign up for an advanced course at your local community college if you want to get your money's worth out of Lightroom and Photoshop. If you're a Photoshop user, Photoshop CS3 for Forensics Professionals by George Reis is out of print but well worth the price if you can find a copy on e-bay or download a PDF. It contains information that you won't find anywhere else. I started with Photoshop Elements 2.0 in 2002 because the software that came with my first 1.3 MP P&S left something to be desired. PS 2.0 is the only version of Elements that I like. Later versions added fluff but no substance for serious photographers. If you can beg, borrow, buy or steal a legal copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0 do so. I prefer it to GIMP. I upgraded to Photoshop CS2 when I purchased a Nikon D70s in 2005 and subsequently upgraded to CS4, CS5 and a version of CS6 that could be purchased outright. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, GIMP and Irfanview have crude file management tools. When you've got a few thousand or a few tens of thousands photos on your hard drive, you need good file management tools as well as a good editor. Professionals using Photoshop often use Photo Mechanic ($150.00) to serve as a front end file manager and organizer. I used Breezebrowser Pro ($95.00) and Breeze Downloader Pro ($45.00) before I discovered Faststone. Faststone is a free viewer, editor and file manager for JPEG and TIFF files ($34.95 for to business and government users). You can download a tutorial from the HELP screen. The viewer will let you view up to forty large thumbnails at a time on a 24" monitor to select files for editing and printing. The editor will let you make the routine adjustments required to make a high quality prints. The file manager will let you create, rename, copy, move and delete files and folders. This is big if you're dealing with thousands of photos taken over a period of years. I use Faststone as my primary editor because Faststone does more things faster than any other editor tried to date. I have the Faststone "edit with external" option set to call Photoshop CS6, Gimp, Irfanview and Photoshop Elements 2.0. I use Gimp and Photoshop Elements for reference. I use the Irfanview ruler because it's more convenient than the Photoshop ruler. 1

2 Faststone does 99% of the things that I need to do on a day in and day out basis. However: Irfanview has a ruler and a weak panoramas stitcher. It can open files the others can't. Gimp has a ruler, a Levels screen with eyedroppers and excellent drawing tools. You can add a third party panorama plug-in. PSE 2.0 has the same Levels screen and panorama stitcher found in Photoshop CS6. Photoshop does all this and more but it may be too much more for occasional users. You need Photoshop and Lightroom if you want to work with RAW files or get into things like Fast Fourier Transformations. And what, you might ask, is a Fast Fourier Transformations? Forensic specialists use Fast Fourier Transformations to bring out detail in low contrast fingerprints. If you want to know how to do a Fast Fourier Transformations, do whatever it takes to acquire a copy of Photoshop CS3 for Forensics Professionals. Microsoft ICE is a free panorama stitcher but the stitchers in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are just as good if not better. I use Faststone and Photoshop CS6 because they cover all of my bases. However, I could live with the combination of Faststone, Gimp and Irfanview if I can avoid shooting RAW and I don't occasionally need to correct various forms of perspective distortion. The Bottleneck I'm using a $600 Dell desktop purchased in 2009 and a $200 Samsung monitor purchased in I replaced the original 7200 RPM boot drive with a faster solid state drive and added an internal data drive to go with an external backup data drive. I get by nicely with a Brother HL-2320D monochrome laser, a letter size Epson Stylus 640 inkjet and a wide carriage Epson 1400 inkjet. I take big print jobs to Costco. If you're a high volume photographer, you'll want a desktop with an Intel quad core processor, a 64-bit operating systems, 12 GB of RAM, a 500 GB SSD boot drive, an internal 1 TB HDD data drive and either an external 1 TB hard drive or a fast connection to a network server. When you come close to filling up a pair of 1 TB data drives (primary and backup) and you never want to run a hard drive past 70% of its formatted capacity, you need help from a data storage professional if your work is of long term importance. Printing is the bottleneck in a high volume operation. If I had to propose a system for a small police department, I'd suggest: 2

3 An Epson 5000 because it's the least expensive Epson inkjet using 200 ml ink cartridges and capable of printing photos on 8 x 10 up to 17 x 22 inch sheets and on rolls up to 17" wide and one hundred feet long. Less expensive printers use more expensive ink. The HiTi P720L event printer can spit out four hundred 4 x 6 inch prints an hour. A commercial monochrome laser such as the Brother HL-6250 for text documents. Workflow Workflow is the process by which digital image files are downloaded from your camera into your computer where: The camera-original files are downloaded into a read-only folder for archival purposes where they can be preserved as required by your state's record retention law and then copied to a working folder. The working copies are edited to produce prints, PowerPoints, slide shows and attachments as required by end-users. End users include instructors, supervisors, detectives, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Distribution methods include photographic prints, contact sheets, slide shows, attachments, PowerPoints and physical media such as thumb drives and CDs. Caveats JPEG files are lossy. You will lose a little quality every time you save a JPEG. You can use Save As to create a new file with a new file name but this will soon clutter your hard drives with many near-duplicates. Always save JPEGs using the highest quality setting. You will lose quality due to file compression but you will lose less quality than if you saved at a lower quality setting. TIFF files are lossless. Once you save a JPEG as a TIFF, you can save the TIFF as often as you like without losing quality. Downside? TIFF files are larger than JPEGs. Convert JPEGs to TIFFs to serve as your working masters. Once your TIFF masters are no longer needed, convert them back to JPEGs for long term storage. This is easy using Faststone's batch conversion option. If you're a police photographer, whoever set up your system created a file structure that made sense at the time. A person working on his own computer can use any file structure that makes sense. The system that you use doesn't matter as long as you archive your camera original files exactly as shot and you work with TIFF copies of your camera-originals during the editing process. Your folder structure should let you find any file quickly using a standard browser such as Faststone, Breezebrowser or Photo Mechanic. (I despise catalog-based file managers.) 3

4 The Faststone Screen The Faststone screen consists of a menu bar, an icon bar, a directory tree, a preview window and a browse window displaying thumbnails of the files in the selected directory. The directory tree and browse window are powerful tools for finding and selecting files. Step One - Download 4

5 Faststone's download screen activated by the camera icon on the icon bar will let you specify the source (your camera) and the destination (a specific folder on your hard drive) for your JPEGs. If you have an advanced camera with dual memory card slots (recommended), you can skip files that have already been downloaded. Step Two - Batch Convert Once you've downloaded your camera originals to the folder where they will be permanently archived, select Batch Convert Selected Images from the Tools menu. In one fell swoop, you can copy your JPEGs as TIFFs from your archival folder to your working folder, optionally resizing and renaming files during the conversion process. Once you're through with the TIFFs, you can use this same screen to batch-convert your TIFFs back to JPEGs. Step Three - Select an Image 5

6 Use the directory tree to navigate to the folder containing the photo that you want to edit. Highlight the thumbnail and hit the enter key. The image will appear full screen. Move the cursor to the extreme left of the screen and the edit menu panel that you see on the following page will appear. I do this with every photo that I intend to keep. If you're a police photographer shooting evidence photos at a felony crime scene, you're obliged to keep everything. If you're shooting personal and practice photos on your own time, delete your mistakes. Don't waste time and disk space on obvious duds. When you have two or more similar photos, use the Faststone "compare selected images" icon on the menu bar to compare the candidates side by side, saving the better of the two. This is a useful option not found in other editors. The edit panel displays all of the options required to edit and print a photo in one place, along with commonly used keyboard shortcuts. Commonly used options are described on the following pages. You'll find both a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts and a button to download a complete tutorial under the HELP option on the menu bar. Faststone is by far the fastest editor that I've ever used and I've used a bunch. I attribute this to a good browser and file management tools combined with all of the commonly used options concentrated on the edit panel. 6

7 Step Four - Rotate and Straighten Occasionally, you'll take a picture with the camera canted. The rotate and straighten options give you a chance to correct these problems. Step Five - Levels Always check the Levels screen. The sliders on the Levels histogram will correct minor exposure problems. Move the black and the white sliders to bookend the histogram. Jiggle the gray slider to taste. 7

8 The photo on page 7 was corrected simply by moving the white slider in to the right edge of the histogram, a process taking no more than a few seconds. Don't make your life complicated. Always start with the easy fixes and work your way up from there. Levels is easy. Step Six - Adjust Lighting If you're not satisfied with a Levels adjustment, go to the Adjust Lighting option. Adjust Lighting gives you four sliders, Shadows, Highlights, Contrast and Saturation. 8

9 You can use the Shadows and Highlights sliders to fine-tune your highlight and shadow values. This is helpful when editing flash pictures. Highlights can tone down an overexposed foreground while Shadows can bring out extra detail in an underexposed background. When highlight and shadow values are adjusted to your satisfaction, Contrast can often improve the overall tone of your picture while Saturation will sometimes perk up your colors. I rarely need to use any of the editing options beyond Levels and Adjust Lighting. If you can't consistently produce a photo fit to print with these options, you need to evaluate your shooting disciplines Step Seven - Adjust Color Faststone has two options (Adjust Color and Auto-Adjust Color) for adjusting colors if you failed to adjust your camera's White Balance to match the ambient illumination. Getting color right at the scene is easier than trying to correct problems after the fact. Step Eight - Sharpen 9

10 For technical reasons, digital cameras rarely give you an image that's critically sharp straight from the camera. Some cameras will let you add additional sharpening in the setup menu but the degree of required sharpening can vary from photo to photo. Hence, most photographers prefer to sharpen as the final step during the editing process. Once you're satisfied with your previous adjustments, call up the Sharpen/Blur menu. Select the USM Sharpen radio button. Navigate to important detail such as lettering. Adjust the amount and radius sliders to taste. If in doubt, start with the default, Amount 25 and Radius 1.0. More often than not, I end up using Amount 50, Radius 0.5. It works for me. You mileage will may vary. Step Nine - Save As Once you're satisfied with your edits, hit Control-S or use the Save As button to save your TIFF with an _ok extension so you know that the photo needs no more work before printing. Once you've saved, you can print the picture at this point or clear the screen and go to the next photo. The Save As screen gives you an opportunity to select a destination folder, create a new folder, accept the default file name, enter a new file name and select a format if you don't like the original format. Resize (As Required) 10

11 I save my edited TIFFs at the camera-original resolution. If resizing is necessary, I'll resize the TIFF and save it as a JPEG under a new file name with an _rs extension. At one time, I believed that it was essential to adjust my print size and resolution before printing or inserting a photo into a PowerPoint or Word document. Today, I usually let my printer driver do the heavy lifting unless I'm making 12 x 18 or 20 x 30 enlargements. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint have options for compressing JPEG photo inserts, avoiding the need to resize beforehand. For ing JPEGs, I use the Letter icon on the icon bar to resize JPEGs to 800 x 600 at the 75% quality setting. If you need to send photos at full resolution, use an FTP service such as largefile.com. FTP = file transfer protocol. Print (As Required) Call up the Faststone print screen by selecting Print on the edit panel or by hitting Control P. You'll be presented with the menu shown here. You can print your photos one at a time or select any reasonable number of photos in a given folder and batch-print them. Batch-printing is a time-saver if you have a computer with sufficient horsepower and a printer with sufficient ink and paper capacity. 11

12 Other Options At this point, you can crop a photo using the Crop Board to focus on important detail. By default, Faststone saves cropped images with a _cr extension. You can create slide shows and contact sheets using the Create menu. You can convert a color photo to B&W using the Greyscale option. You can use Reduce Noise to eliminate the grain caused by shooting at a high ISO. Before and After - BNSF 1603 The top photo is the camera-original JPEG shot with a Panasonic ZS9 pocket camera and cropped so that I could get before and after photos on the same page. The bottom photo was tweaked using the Faststone Adjust Lighting and Sharpen commands. This particular photo couldn't be improved in Adjust Levels. The tweaked photo is a little sharper and it has more contrast with better shadow detail. These differences are easy to see when you compare 6.7 x 10 inch prints on premium glossy paper. I got comparable results using similar editing options in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and Gimp. For my purposes, Faststone is just a little faster and more convenient. Use whatever works for you or your department. 12

13 Before and After - Flash at Night - Rampart Library The Rampart Range library shot with a Nikon D7000 and an SB-800 flash at ISO The top photo is straight from the camera. The bottom photo was tweaked using Faststone's Adjust Lighting, Reduce Noise and Sharpen commands. 13

14 Before and After - Flash at Night - Truck Truck in the driveway with a Nikon D7000 and an SB-800 flash at ISO 200. The top photo is straight from the camera. The bottom photo was tweaked using Faststone's Adjust Lighting, Reduce Noise and Sharpen commands. 14

15 Before and After - Long Range Flash - Woodland Park Museum Buildings The top photo was shot with a Nikon D7000 with an SB-800 flash. The bottom photo is the same JPEG with the foreground and background exposures balanced using Faststone's Adjust Lighting screen. Adjustments of his nature are essential when your shooting at one hundred feet. 15

16 Before and After - Time Exposure Top, a 2.5 second time exposure of the Tweeds building illuminated by weak street lighting. Bottom, the same photo after a brief Levels and Sharpen adjustment. This isn't rocket science. You've just got to play with it until you understand how the various controls work. 16

17 Draw, Crop and Resize - 16 MP Digital This photo of the Royal Gorge Railroad maintenance siding and an abandoned brick plant in Cañon City, Colorado, was taken with a 16 MP Nikon D7000 with an mm lens. I used Faststone's Crop Board to crop the top photo so I could fit both photos on the page. I used the Faststone's Draw Board tools to draw a red box around the engine at lower right. I used the crop tool again to crop just inside the red box. I then used the Resize/Resample tool to add extra pixels to the engine crop to bring out the same detail that you would see if the entire photo was enlarged to make a 20 x 30 inch print. This sort of thing takes only a minute or two. The Draw Board will allow you to insert text, lines and arrows if you need to make an exhibit print. 17

18 Draw, Crop and Resize - 16 MP Kodak Portra 400 Film Scan Don't sneer at the quality available in today's professional color films. Top, Nikon FM2 with a 28 mm AI-S lens circa 1982 and fresh Kodak Portra 400 film processed and scanned by North Coast Photo Service. Bottom: A crop from a 20 x 30 inch enlargement. 18

19 Faststone's EXIF Screens Faststone has three EXIF screens. Select a photo in the browse window and press Control-H to pop up the EXIF screens. I used the Faststone Capture utility to capture the screens and save them as JPEGs to my hard drive. You can also send them directly to your printer. 19

20 3-2-1 Backup Strategy Do not even think about running mission-critical applications without effective anti-virus protection, an uninterruptible power supply and an effective backup strategy. Use the Backup Strategy described in Now retired, I do nightly backups to one internal and one external hard drives using GFI Backup Free. I gave up on cloud storage after two different Internet storage providers managed to screw things up beyond repair. I'll occasionally copy my more important files to a large thumb drive and stick it in my safety deposit box. Manuscripts both complete and in progress are copied to my web site. During my working career, I had two computers in my office plus an external hard drive and a connection to a network server farm which was backed up to tape at regular intervals. The question is not if your hard drive will fail, only when. If your department or agency has a professionally managed in-house network, your IT administrator will handle the backup chores and specify reliable anti-virus protection. I've had several hard drive failures since I acquired my first computer in So far, I've never lost a byte of data because I always had a thoroughly tested double-redundant backup system in place. Irfanview Irfanview earns a place on my desktop because I can use Faststone to select an image, use the edit with external option to call up Irfanview and use the Irfanview ruler to measure the distance in pixels between two unknown points and two known points. Knowing that one pixel is equal to so many feet or inches, you determine the size of an unknown. The process is known as photogrammetry. Of the editors that I'm familiar with, only Irfanview, Gimp and Photoshop have rulers. Irfanview's ruler is convenient. However, Irfanview lacks several features that I consider essential. 20

21 Photoshop Elements Top: Five overlapping photos taken with a 6 MP Nikon D70s. Middle: Those same five photos stitched together in Photoshop Elements 2.0. Bottom: When cropped, you end up with a 22 MP panorama that can make a wall-size mural. The merge tool in Photoshop Elements is identical to the merge tool in Photoshop. Irfanview and Gimp have panorama tools but I prefer the tools in Elements and Photoshop. GIMP GIMP has all the tools available in Faststone and Irfanview and then some but the user interface is awkward and it lacks a proper file manager. If you only work with a handful of JPEGs, GIMP may be the only program that you need. If you work with hundreds if not thousands of photos, GIMP's rudimentary file management tools might be a deal breaker. Photoshop and Lightroom Photoshop and Lightroom are the elephant in the corner. These programs are now leased together. Lightroom is both an editor and a catalog-based file manager. When there's heavy lifting to be done, Photoshop enters the picture. Once you get past the steep learning curve and the price, these programs can do things that cannot be done in Faststone, GIMP, Irfanview and their free or near-free competitors along with their not-so-free competitors like Capture One. 21