A few physical backgrounds to compare

[ray_parkhurst]

I like shooting on backgrounds that will stay with the image, ie I do not like cropping a coin out of an image and placing it on an artificial/digital background. Invariably some detail of the edge is lost, or there are remnants of the background showing, etc. For Cents I usually use either a black velvet or a textured plastic. Occasionally an interesting material pops up that I want to try. That happened today as I unpacked a box from REI. There were black plastic sheets used to protect the contents. The sheets have an interesting hexagonal divot pattern which I thought might look good. Anyway, below are pics of a 55-S BIE on several different backgrounds for your viewing pleasure:

Hex Divot


Photo Black Velvet


Plant Tray




True-Grey


Soft Foam


Cotton Pique


Rough Sticker


Microscope Stage


Contact Black

[GrumpyEd]

I like the black velvet the best.

I'm wondering if the backgrounds change the file size much. It would seem like cropping onto a solid black or any truly solid color would result in a smaller file size especially if there's any compression. Do you see that in the file sizes with different backgrounds vs a solid color?

[ray_parkhurst]

The black velvet, which has a completely black background, is the smallest at 517k. The largest is the last one, microscope stage, at 899k. So there is indeed a lot of extra data required to store the more complex backgrounds.

I forgot to upload one of the backgrounds...here is Contact Black, also added above:

[eaxtellcoin]

I'm the pessimist on this one. Black backgrounds take light away from the edge of all parts of the coin. I.E the rim, back of the head, back of shoulder and in front of the face. The Rev with the flatter field is alot easier. I don't have any problems with white on the REV and usually only slight darker at the back of the head and shoulder. Black makes it all to dark for me.

[ray_parkhurst]

When I am shooting a coin to sell, I use a textured background. This is why I wanted to try the new backgrounds (hex divot and contact black), ie I wanted to see if they would be better than the plant tray I've generally used. I do like the new ones, but I am still liking the plant tray best.

[eaxtellcoin]

Brother, to each is own
The color is the best take away. I think on my screen the color is best with the second pic.
Eric

[makecents]

Very cool Ray!! I do not have a favorite other than to say I like the textured backgrounds the best. The contrast, in my opinion, make the coin stand out more. I have no pic knowledge at all but have a question for you. The textured, that obviously take more pixels, does this force a sharpened pic of the coin also?

[ray_parkhurst]

Brother, to each is own
The color is the best take away. I think on my screen the color is best with the second pic.
Eric

So you like the color with black background, but not the lighting.

Very cool Ray!! I do not have a favorite other than to say I like the textured backgrounds the best. The contrast, in my opinion, make the coin stand out more. I have no pic knowledge at all but have a question for you. The textured, that obviously take more pixels, does this force a sharpened pic of the coin also?

The coin itself doesn't change a whole lot due to the background. The images are a little different since I processed a couple of them differently to enhance the backgrounds for the comparison, but the background doesn't really affect the coin much.

[GrumpyEd]

The black velvet, which has a completely black background, is the smallest at 517k. The largest is the last one, microscope stage, at 899k. So there is indeed a lot of extra data required to store the more complex backgrounds.

Thanks!
That is a big difference especially if you store a lot of images it's using 73% more data. Might be even more difference if it's a truly solid color since even the velvet has a texture. I didn't expect it to be quite that different.

[ray_parkhurst]

Thanks!
That is a big difference especially if you store a lot of images it's using 73% more data. Might be even more difference if it's a truly solid color since even the velvet has a texture. I didn't expect it to be quite that different.

The image file with pure black circle crop around coin is 468k, so you're right that even the small amount of data in the black velvet background makes an unexpectedly big difference.