Hidden Information in Digital Photographs

I am truly amazed at the amount of hidden information in a digital photograph compared to a silver print.  This holds true, even for actual silver emulsion photographs that have been digitized.  I will show you what I mean.

I was perusing the online obits from my hometown, and came upon the photograph below.

It was taken during World War II which was some 70 years ago now.  The fellow pictured above as a young seaman had just died at a ripe old age.  The photograph above, is a hand-colored black and white photograph.

I wanted to see how much digital information that I could extract, so I threw away all of the color information.  This is what the original photograph would have looked like (below).
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Now, there were various grades of photographic paper and various types of printing-out emulsions.  Some papers were very contrasty and some were warm.  For hand coloring, the photo would be printed on a paper that wasn't light and warm, as below.  Then it was hand colored to look like the top picture.

So the hand colored photo was digitized and put online.  I decided to see what color information was still to be had.  I fed it into photoshop and adjusted the color and output levels automatically from the menu.  I was stunned at what came out, pictured below.

There was still enough color information in the digitized photo to look like a modern shot.  I am sure that the owners of the picture would be amazed to see their departed relative's pic in technicolor, compared to the limpid print on the obituary.

As a former owner of a darkroom, all that I can say, is that I am now a huge believer in digital photography and photoshop.

New Revenue Stream for Photoshop Gurus

Self publishing on Amazon with eBooks is now a big thing.

I was reading an online forum for that topic and the author of the above book idly wondered online as to whether Brits hated her because she wasn't getting sales in the UK.  Her book had a cover of the heroine in a bar scene that was drawn for the cover.

I opined that perhaps the UK reader had cultural anomalies that made them hard to identify with the American bar scene.  The author replied that she was considering changing the cover.

It occurred to me that a photoshop person could make some serious cash by doing covers for authors.  Then I discovered that they were.  There was some guy selling stock photos for $20 with the title and author added with the photoshop text tools.  Others were selling covers for up to $299 per cover.  Photoshop gurus, here is another revenue stream for you.

A real graphics designer with a creative flair could probably make more money doing covers than the authors were making writing the books.

Just as an exercise tonight, I idly wondered how I would re-design the cover of Ms. Alroc's book called "Strangely Sober".  Knowing that sex sells, I photoshopped the above cover just as an exercise.  Ms. Alroc didn't ask for this and is unaware that I am doing this.  I just did it to see how my design effort would turn out.  I will certainly notify her that I have done this, and I will remove it if she requests it.

And if you are a Kindle reader, please buy her book:  http://www.amazon.com/Strangely-Sober-Essa-Alroc/dp/1478341467/ref=la_B008QN3FX2_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350875121&sr=1-1

Thanks.