Jaggies Are Ruining My Nature Pictures

[BWiley]

What can I do to prevent/eliminate jaggies in some of my nature images? I have some great shots of birds and animals sitting on pine needles or grass, but when they bend at about 45 degrees, the jaggies become very obvious. It's when the grass or needles are thin that the jaggies are much more obvious. I always shoot either RAW or TIF, usually files from 9-11 MB.

What can be done in Photoshop or with other programs to minimize this distraction? Thanks for your help.
Bill Wiley

[mttmrphy]

Whats a jaggie? Like a pixel?

[CyberDyneSystems]

Jaggy's.. sometimes called "staircasing" .. diagonal lines that because of pixelation become jagged... with visible steps in them....

What Camera.. what resolution,. and what are you doing in post processing?

[robertwgross]

Where are you seeing jaggies?

On the screen at 100%, or on an inkjet print?

---Bob Gross---

[stopbath]

What is 'very obvious'?

Are you inspecting closer than viewing distance for the print, or enlarging beyond 100% on the screen?

You can either shoot at higher resolution (hello new camera) or use a photoshop add on called Perfect Fractols (or something like that). Which will enlarge the image after figuring out the images natural lines. It provides the best method to enlarge images without exaggerating jaggies, but it is also very pricey.

Many graphic editors can enlarge images by using a variety of methods. Usually the slowest method works the best.

[robertwgross]

A friend of mine had good RAW images on the screen. No jaggies. By the time he got them printed, the jaggies were terrible.

I watched him process the files, and he was doing some Resample/Resize all wrong. He was throwing away 80% of his image file size. That will sure produce jaggies quickly.

---Bob Gross---

[BWiley]

I've had this jaggie problem in 2 different scenarios: 1.) With certain images shot from my Canon 1Ds and 2.) with 60 MB digital scans from medium format negative film (on limited occasions). I can see them on the computer screen at 66% and 100%, but worst, they are more apparent on large prints that I am making these days, ranging from 11x14 to 24x30. Obviously, it points out that there's little room for poor technique when things are enlarged to this size.

The first time I shot my 1Ds I was doing bird photography and as I explained, some of the bird shots were great, but the pine needles or leaves that they were sitting on were distorted with jaggies. I realized after shooting that the camera was set for high sharpness, which is probably the major factor in this case. Because of that setting, the background was very patterned, forcing me to reduce the sharpness. Certain areas couldn't be helped enough for large prints though and I've never shot that way again.

I still don't understand why I have the severe jaggies on some prints made from large digital scans from medium format negs. Is 60 MB not large enough of a scan for a 16x20? I've made prints from other digital scans where I'd swear that the print from the scan was far superior than the print from the negative, probably because of slight adjustment in Photoshop. But on certain other shots, I simply don't know how to get rid of the jaggies without oversoftening the entire picture.

Any comments are sincerely appreciated.

[maderito]

I was hoping to see some replies to your questions. Perhaps if you were more specific about your methods?

-What scanner are you using?
-Are you scanning in 24 bit or 48 bit color?
-Does the scanner perform any processing (sharpening, noise reduction, color correction, etc) before sending the image to Photoshop?
-In PS, are you working in 8 or 16 bit.
-How do you handle image re-sizing?
-How are your prints produced?

Can you post a crop of an example of your problem?

Not sure your answers will generate any responses - but your problem definitely seems curious. :?

[jinushaun]

I've had similar problems with jaggies, but I attribute it to my lowly A70. Detail quickly degrades when you're shooting far away trees. The leaves look pretty bad on screen, and absolutely horrible in print.