bjrichus said:
It was actually a favor for a non-profit so I was being generous.

Man! I tell you... :-)

Proof that no good deed goes unpunished. ;)

Distorted? like this?

My son's favorite picture of himself from Photo Booth on the iPad...

never mind, don't have it where I can post it.

iris chrome said:So finally I just defaulted all the settings and just applied some arts fartsy effects and voila!

I might try that, but I can just see that on huge screen monitor displaying art effect pictures with the comment underneath: "Residents Playing Basketball" ...

Did I say this was for a residential training facility for people with mental disabilities, so we might end up with some very freaked out people...

"LOOK! His head is all distorted... My reality is all screwed up!"

:(

sevencrossing said:
I have no sympathy for self inflicted injuries
Freebees are allways the jobs that give you the most grief

I'm just trying to be charitable to a good cause... :)

Your point is well taken. "OUCH" ... point ... self inflicted injuries ... Funny? No?

TaoTeJared said:
Give it your artistic touch! That will hide some of the resolution and focus issues.

I second that. My girlfriend once had a bunch of pictures of hers taken by a friend and then asked me to edit them. Granted the pictures were in focus most of them were not exposed properly and had bad lightning. I tried my best to adjust all the colors, exposure, saturation and white balance in photoshop without any decent progress. So finally I just defaulted all the settings and just applied some arts fartsy effects and voila!

bjrichus said:
It was actually a favor for a non-profit so I was being generous.

I have no sympathy for self inflicted injuries
Freebees are allways the jobs that give you the most grief

IMHO, get ipad and the new snapseed app from NikSoftware, click hee and there, crop and You'll be more than fine.
If Your output device is HDTV than You actually doesn't need more than 2mpx, which is good in Your situation.

@sevencrossing - as I'm not in favor of bordeaux, I don't mind joining You for a glass or two :)

Bram said:
Mate I think you may have to ask yourself how you got yourself into this situation in the first place.

It was actually a favor for a non-profit so I was being generous.

Man! I tell you... :-)

Mate I think you may have to ask yourself how you got yourself into this situation in the first place. What'd the client tell you about the assignment before you took it? Of course I do understand that it's kind of natural for photographers to expect to have to work with material that meets certain minimum quality requirements, but have there not been any signs to indicate that you'd be working with this crap?

Thanks for all the good thoughts and wishes guys.

I have taken Seven Crossings suggestion and am in the process of drowning my sorrows, but not in the River Seven! ;-)

Note: For those that don't know, The "Seven Crossing" is a rather large bridge OVER the River Seven in the west of England, and I've driven over it a few times myself - before I moved to the USA.

I also kind of like the idea of using a cell phone to edit said pictures. I wonder if an old 1995 vintage Nokia can run Photoshop?

<FX: bangs old phone on table a few times?>

What's that? Can you hear me now?

Just hire models that look exactly like the people in the pictures and recreate all the scenes in your studio.

Ok, I don't have any good ideas either. This is just one of those situations that we get ourselves into when we work for people who aren't as experienced as us (or in your case, not at all). I sometimes face this type of situation when I need to make a slideshow or a book or something, but usually in those cases, I try to make sure I can put in some pictures of my own so I can be assured of a minimum standard. I'm not sure I'd know how to deal with your situation.

Could refusing your client be a more stress free way of passing your time? :D

Enough with the whinning about closed threads! You guys soil your diapers when a thread gets closed and you STILL make smartaz comments when a thread isn't closed. Get over it already. PM me if you want to make any more snide remarks, otherwise I will delete any further, "Niko's going to close your thread" Boo-Hoo! comments.

Edited the title of this thread.

I have before me, a bottle of rather fine Bordeaux ( its 10.40 pm in the UK)
I think you had better have a glass
On second thoughts, you had better have the whole bottle

Niko - this is what forums are all about
sometimes we just have to let off steam

Bring on the Filtered B&W, Canotype, Sepia, Lomo, Holga, Shepard Fairey and Warhol filters! Give it your artistic touch! That will hide some of the resolution and focus issues.

Had the same from a friend - 50 shot with a cell phone! @#$&%! So I edited all of them on my iPhone with all the filters I have downloaded. Not what she expected but it worked - kind of. ;)

I am OK with Niko 'terminating' this - I just have to share what I have just gone through or I'm going to hit the wall in my office very hard indeed!

I have been working my way through about 300 shots, where most of them were taken by other people on P&S cameras and a few were taken on dSLR cameras. None were taken by me or anyone else with any kind of photo training.

Most were (at best) fuzzy and/or wrongly exposed, and/or poorly composed and a few were also just outright blurred. Some were 1 or 2MP is size and a few were 5MP, so some editing is going to be possible, but as about 20 of them were only 4x5" prints, this is going to be a long and difficult job.

The idea here is for me to pick out perhaps 30 or so "best" ones and do some minor editing and cropping on them so they could be used on a revolving display (a bit like a slide show) at an event. I'll be lucky at the end of this all, to get about 10 that are decent. Oh yes, and the display for the slide show? A 50" HDTV.

The client asked me: "Can't you just Photoshop them so they look good?"

As they say in a certain movie, "In space, none can hear you scream."

I'll just go and throw myself off the top floor of a building ...... ;-)