Mills Plates

[Mike Connor]

This photo was kindly donated by Steve Williams, taken of flies from William Mills and Sons, in his possession. He puts the date around 1940, but I think they may be earlier than that.

I have lightly enhanced these images from scans of catalogues in my possession. MC

[Smuggler]

That Dusty Miller salmon fly might be bigger than my hand, lol.

PS. Brook and River Trouting by Edmonds (I've seen it Edmunds too, even in the fishing in Eden book) has some really great and interesting plates. I've read that book before and while reading Fishing in Eden the reference made in there made me look it up and I remembered the illustrations. Give that one a look!

[DNicolson]

Those are great pictures Mike.
How exactly do you enhance them?
Run them through a Photo Manager ?

[Mike Connor]

Those are great pictures Mike.
How exactly do you enhance them?
Run them through a Photo Manager ?

I have several graphics programs that can do various things, what I actually do depends on what the plates are like to begin with after I have scanned them ( or otherwise obtained them). With old faded or discoloured plates I set up the actual fly colours first. then I try to get the background as neutral as possible, this often involves enlarging the image a great deal and then going in and changing pixels to suit. There are a lot of other operations but it would take me too long to describe them all here, sometimes I use several programs and the colormunki, sometimes only one. It all depends on what is necessary. If various damage is over a fly, then I have to go in and restore it pixel for pixel with the right colour. It can take a while!

Here's a "work in progress" on a fly on a damaged plate;



If you click on that it will take you to the original at image shack where I just uploaded it and you can get an idea of the size. When I have finished repairing it I take it back down to whatever size it needs to be. This is the actual fly;



TL
MC

[willowhead]

WOW!!! you sure do "go beyond" for us Mike.......we appreciate it immensly.

[hankaye]

Mike Connor, Howdy;

The last time I was in college (2003/4 -2007/8), I was studing GIS & GPS systems and other related subjects.
One of my favorites was Cartography. Using computers to create a majestic mapping masterpieces was fun and
involved quite a bit of what you are doing. Takes a huge amount of memory. Do you utilize a seperate hard drive to
use for these programs ?

Just being courious ...

hank

[Mike Connor]

.....

[Mike Connor]

I could do that if I wanted to but it is slower and fortunately I very rarely need to, I have 32 GB of RAM in my main 64 BIT machine, plus a new fast SSD ( Solid State Disc) and it is also a very powerful machine with a new Intel I7 processor and a high end graphic card and I use a multiple monitor setup. My main monitor is a DELL U3011 IPS ( means In Plane Switching), running at 2560 X 1600 pixels, and the secondary is a Samsung SyncMaster running at 1920 X 1200 pixels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPS_panel

TL
MC

[hankaye]

MikeConnor, Howdy;

Sounds like you have it 'wired'.

hank

[letumgo]

Holy smokes! That sounds like a BEAST of a computer, Mike! Must make working on images a joy...

It makes me smile to think of you working on these old plates with the latest and greatest technology. Kind of a ying-and-yang thing. Love it!