Always a great selection of U.S. collector coins

June 2007

COIN AND PAPER MONEY PHOTOGRAPHY, PART 3

The final article in our series on digital photography of coins and paper money takes a look at processing the pictures for publishing online and in hard copy media. The first two parts are still available on our web site:
introduction including selecting a suitable digital camera
setup for photographing numismatic items, with emphasis on lighting

Many recent model printers have the capability to print pictures from digital cameras without a computer. Some of these printers have slots for one or more of the most widely used digital camera memory cards. Uploading your photos to a computer is necessary when you'd like to edit them, save digital copies, e-mail to others and/or publish them online. A few recent model cameras are capable of wireless transfer. More commonly, the camera is connected with a cable (typically USB) or the memory card is removed from the camera and inserted into a peripheral card reader that's connected to the computer. Consult the manuals for your camera and any card reading devices you may have for more specific info.

Digital cameras are often sold with photo management and editing software, and software for these tasks may already be included with your computer's operating system. Should you find these options lacking, other products are available. We use Apple's iPhoto (included with Mac OS X) for managing photo libraries and Adobe Photoshop Elements for editing pictures. Photoshop Elements is a scaled down version of Adobe's powerful Photoshop software, with just about all the features useful for editing photographs at a fraction of the price.

image not yet rotated

Photo management software installed on your computer may launch automatically when a camera is connected. Start the program manually, if necessary, then import the photos from your camera's memory card. While many photo management applications have some editing capabilities, we suggest setting the preferences to instead launch a separate, more advanced editor (such as Photoshop Elements). Image editing software facilitates technical and creative manipulation of pictures such as rotatation, cropping, resizing, annotatation, color correction and brightness and contrast adjustments. Some of these steps are discussed below in general terms, but the specific menus, mouse clicks, keystrokes, etc. vary from one application to another. Consult the documentation for your application for detailed instructions.

Rotation: chances are the coin or note in your picture will not be oriented exactly the way you'd like (e.g. with what's considered the top of the coin at the top of the window). Use the editing software's rotation feature to rotate the entire image. If the amount of rotation isn't quite right, undo it (to restore the original image) and try another value. Proper rotation can usually be achieved in 2-4 iterations.

Note: The image at the right, showing a coin picture prior to rotation, has been resized as described below.

Cropping: use the editing software's cropping capability to remove excessive space around the object of interest. The extra space adds nothing to your picture but will increase storage space and transfer time when the picture is e-mailed or downloaded from a web site.

Resizing: depending on the resolution (number of megapixels) of your camera, its distance from the object you've photographed and other factors, the picture may be much larger than the object itself. In addition to the storage space and transfer time considerations mentioned for cropping, this high magnification tends to exaggerate minor imperfections such as bag marks. We suggest resizing the image so that the width and height of the picture are each 2-4 times the actual size of a coin and about the same as the actual size of paper money.

The image at right has been resized to 1/2 the width and height of the original picture, after rotation and cropping. The area and number of pixels have been reduced by a factor of 4. Click the image to see the picture at its original size.

Color correction: if your pictures have a strong color cast (e.g. too yellow), try a different light source or changing the white balance setting on your camera, as explained in part 1. Final adjustments can be made, if necessary, by adjusting colors with your image editing software.

image after brightness and contrast adjusted

image after brightness and contrast adjusted

Brightness and contrast: adjustments to brightness and contrast may make your picture more closely represent the actual object, e.g. by lightening dark photos or increasing the contrast between dark and light areas. If more than subtle adjustments to brightness and contrast seem to be necessary, different camera settings and/or lighting are probably advisable. Avoid setting the contrast so high that the picture looks unrealistic.

In the image at the right, brightness and contrast have each been slightly increased from the original picture.

image after sharpening

Sharpening: editing software may optionally be used to sharpen pictures, which makes fine details (including small marks present on most coins) more pronounced.

The picture at the right illustrates the effect of sharpening.

Annotation: most image editing applications have text tools that allow you to enter whatever information you'd like to save with the picture. Examples include identifying information, photographic conditions or a copyright notice. Add text after completing any image resizing, color correction or other adjustments.

Combining multiple images: image editing software can readily be used to create a single picture displaying both sides of a coin or note. You can also add a close-up of an area of interest or create a collage of multiple objects. Open a new window large enough to contain all the images you're combining. Select the editing software's marquee tool. Use an elliptical marquee for coins and other round objects and a rectangular marquee for paper money. Position the pointer at the top left corner of the area you wish to copy (easy to find if you first crop all extra space at the left and top edges of a coin), click the mouse button and drag down and to the right. Holding the "shift" key while performing this operation may constrain the ellipse to the shape of a circle. Copy the selected area to the clipboard. Drag the selected area to the new window or position the pointer in it, and paste the clipboard there. Re-position pasted images, annotate and crop as desired, then save the combined image to a new file.

Saving in jpeg format is recommended for photographs that will be used on a web site. However, another image format universally supported by web browsers, Compuserve GIF^®, supports transparent backgrounds. The image at the right is in GIF format and, as you can see, the area outside the perimeter of the coin is now the same color as the page background. Click this image to see an annotated picture in jpeg format of both sides of this coin, a 1937 Lincoln Cent that has been graded MS67 RD by NGC.

While there are a lot more details than we can reasonably include in our articles on coin and paper money photography, or that vary for particular equipment and software, the information provided will get you well on the way to taking great pictures of coins, notes and exonumia. Of course, much more information is available online, which you can easily find with Google and other search engines. With practice and a willingness to experiment a bit, you can develop a setup and detailed technique for your particular needs and budget.

CURRENT SPECIAL

2008 Red Books are now on sale at 30% off the suggested retail price. This annual reference has been consulted by coin collectors everywhere since 1946 for typical retail prices for government minted coins and many private issues used in the United States from the colonial era until the present. Coin values in up to 9 grades are compiled from data supplied by more than 100 contributors, providing the most extensively researched data available.

This sale will end on June 19, 2007. More info about this offer is available on our Current Special page.

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