[guerito]

Is there something I could do to make images taken from TV look good? Here's an example:



Yes the snooker time of the year has started!

[peter]

Tried Black and white ?
~_~ ..

[Toad]

Guerito - this will work somewhat - not perfect but the example below only took me 20 seconds to process...Note: this is Photoshop specific - may not work the same with other editors.

- convert to Lab color
- select channel A and apply Guasssian blur - 6.3 pixels
- select channel B and do the same
- reconvert to RGB color

In lab color - all of the color info is separate from the luminosity and light info - thus by blurring the color - you lose the color banding without losing the detail of the picture. A little noise reduction would also help reduce the npoise on the table and sign - I did not do that here. You will see that I lost quite a bit of color in the snooker balls - you should be able to saturate that back in after returning to RGB.



Best
Toad

[guerito]

Thanks Toad! I'll try to translate this to PSP and if PSP doesn't do it I'll have to learn Photoshop.

I haven't tried B&W - well I think snooker is one of the least suitable subjects for B&W because of the importance of the colors of the balls. Also, I love the green cloth of the snooker table. Hmm, maybe conversion to B&W and recoloring could do something...

Thanks! I'll be in my lab for the next days...

[Toad]

Just to let you know - there is nothing magical about the 6.3 pixel figure - you just apply the blur until you see the color banding / color noise go away - sometimes that takes only 1 pixel - it took 6.3 in this case because the color banding on the face was so severe.

[shuttertalk]

Sorry, silly question - was that taken via video capture card (or something similar) or with a camera pointed at the TV?

[dave]

Sorry, silly question

I was gonna ask something similar!!!

Is that a TV capture card? if yes is it a HDTV capture card?

[guerito]

Nope, it's just a camera pointed to the TV. Exposure time 1/10 to catch multiple frames. Haven't got my tripod yet, so I steadied the camera with the back of a chair.

I already added a blur to the picture to get rid of the vertical pixel lines. I might have had a slight camera shake because I saw no horizontal pixel lines.

[dewy]

Get better TV reception?
I am guesing it was a tv tunercard.
I got a tunercard 2 weeks ago and it takes stills from the tv, YOu can get HDTV onces but I got an analogue bcause I don't know how well digital reception is in my area, but the HDTV (digital) tuner cards are cheaper than the analogues).

[shuttertalk]

Oh... right. I think it's very difficult... i've tried it many times before. I think it will always be blurry because TV will only have about 600x500 pixels or thereabouts... plus you've got problems with reflections, etc. and colour reproduction etc..

The best way (and probably only way) is to get a tv capture card and feed your video out into it. even then, the image will only be about 600x500 but at least it will be sharp.

[StudioJ]

Ok another silly question, why would you want to take a photo of a television or capture using a tv capture card to begin with?

Wouldn't it just be easier to hook up a VCR?