I'm fairly new to digital photography, and pretty much stumbling my way through. I have read that you don't really need the highest resolution unless you are planning on printing very large photos (which I am not). Most of mine are for on-line viewing and a few for 8x10 (max) printing. But I am interested in having fine quality and detail. That being said, what would be the best resolution for these kinds of photos?
OK - that's actually how large I set my resolution (surprise to myself) on my recent trip to France, and I was pleased with how they looked.
Now, my next question - when I resample them to 72ppi, for instance when I want to post a photo on this site or email, it seems like a lot is lost in translation. Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is this just the nature of downsizing? Please pardon my dummy-ness in this area - I am truly just learning as I go.
By the way, Andrys, I have only had time to look at your Florence photos, but, oh my, just beautiful. The Ponto Vecchio, David, Duomo - wow
Terry, if you load a photo onto Slow Photos, the software will resize the photo for you. This is what I do. It may be a little slower, but I've found when I do it myself, sometimes my photos get very very small. I think it resizes them for the Trip Reports too, but maybe not....
Terry, there would be two possibilities (at least the way that I've done it!). You could include a link in a post to your photo in Slow Photos. (But that wouldn't place the photo in your post... people would have to click the link.)
Or you could right click on the photo (full page version... not the little thumbnail) and copy it back onto your hard drive in its new resized version and then you can browse to it as you're composing a post and actually attach it to the post. Then the photo itself will show up in your post.
One approach that does seem to work for me is to change the size of the photo first-- if you change the width to 300, then the height will automatically change-- and THEN change the resolution to 72ppi. I don't understand this, but I think when you change the resolution first is when it gets all weird.
But I'm still hoping that Marta or Pauline or a real expert will jump in!
Or you could right click on the photo (full page version... not the little thumbnail) and copy it back onto your hard drive in its new resized version and then you can browse to it as you're composing a post and actually attach it to the post. Then the photo itself will show up in your post.
Hmm, that sounds do-able. So does your first possibility. But one answer always presents another question for me! When you download your photos into SlowPhoto, are they considered ready for viewing by all after they've been resized by SlowPhoto, or do you still get a chance to edit, caption, change the order, delete if necessary?
Kathy, I really appreciate your patience with this, and you've been most helpful. I'm not quite ready to create a photo album on SlowPhoto from my France trip, although I'm getting close (still working on Photoshop! - and they say that technology is supposed to simplify our lives!).
You don't want to know how many photos I have posted on Slow Photos!
As soon as they are uploaded, they are there. (It's not like a trip report where you can fiddle around with it before it's public.) But you can always edit the title, information, order etc. (even delete it)... I guess forever.
But somebody would really have to go looking to find your photos. (The last couple of photos posted are on the home page, but other than that, they are really kind of "buried" in with all the others. And an album isn't "posted" officially by a moderator like a rental review or a trip report. It's up to you if you want to announce it on the message board, and you just kind of announce it yourself-- or not.
I like the photo albums because they are also a way to share your photos with non-Slow Travel people. And I admit-- I really enjoy looking at my own photos!
Do you know how to upload photos in a group (vs. doing them one at a time)? That will save you some time...
I'm looking forward to your photos and your trip report--
Hmmm, I'm beginning to understand. So, when you upload your photos, are they automatically placed in like a kaydee folder, or do you have to create an album? (I'm sure this is not making much sense, sorry).
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Originally posted by kaydee: Do you know how to upload photos in a group (vs. doing them one at a time)? That will save you some time...
Actually, I don't know how, but would love to learn. If I was Brenda I feel like I'd have a really good quote right about here.
I did go onto SlowPhotos, and Kathy you are the !! And I mean that as a high compliment - I've seen some of your albums already, but was not aware of all the others - I have so enjoyed hearing and reading about your travels - and I just finished looking through your Morning Markets in Provence - just so lovely, Kathy. Thanks for sharing. I intend to go through all your albums with a cup of chai and start dreaming and planning my future travels!
When you upload your photos to Slow Photos, one of the first fields is "Choose a catagory to upload your images to.". Depending upon where you are when you press Upload, that will determine what the field 'defaults' (or is set to). If you are at the main area, it will default to "Member Galleries".
All members automatically have a gallery but we really don't want you to put them in your gallery. There is no organization to the gallery and it is easy for your pictures to 'get lost' to others.
We prefer that you create an album (Click on My Albums) for your set of photos. It is much easier to organize them and sort them if they are in an album. Here is a hint. If you create an album, click the link for the name of the album under "My Albums" and then click Upload Photos, you will automatically be set to upload your photos to that album.
Otherwise, you can select your album from the list of catagories. The trick in finding your album is to click the down arrow and then scroll to the very end of the list to find your album.
You can also insert a photos on Slow Photo in a message as Kaydee mentioned. That is not hard if you are using Firefox. What is nice about this is you can put multiple pictures into your message and control where they are in your message.
In Firefox - Right click on the picture and select "Copy Picture Location" - From menu at the top of a message box, click the image button (the one that looks like a mountain and is second from end on the right - Then paste the link into the image field. Here is an example:
With IE, it is a bit harder and really hard to explain, - Right click on the picture - Select properties - Highlight the Address (URL) and copy by either right clicking or holding down control and pressing C.
If you need any help on creating albums or uploading, feel free to email me. My address is in my profile.
Originally posted by teaberry: OK - that's actually how large I set my resolution (surprise to myself) on my recent trip to France, and I was pleased with how they looked.
Terry, that setting makes great prints! Good choice! :-)
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Now, my next question - when I resample them to 72ppi, for instance when I want to post a photo on this site or email, it seems like a lot is lost in translation. Is there something I'm doing wrong, or is this just the nature of downsizing? Please pardon my dummy-ness in this area - I am truly just learning as I go.
No dummy-ness whatsoever. The nature of downsizing is that the resulting picture will always be less sharp. You just need to use your photo-editing program to sharpen up to where you were (and some people go beyond that these days and it's a very popular look at pbase.com galleries, I notice, though I don't like the resulting halos around the edges in some of those).
Going down to '72 dpi' will mainly make a difference in the quality of the print you might make and make a smaller file.
It's a choice for web-viewing. However, it's good to make sure you're still at the web-size you like (such as 800x600). Some photo-editing programs decrease the pixel size when people stipulate lower dpi, but in Paintshop I can go back to the pixel size and ask for 800x600 and they both stay in place.
Re-sharpening is a must though; otherwise your smaller photo is pretty blurry.
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By the way, Andrys, I have only had time to look at your Florence photos, but, oh my, just beautiful. The Ponto Vecchio, David, Duomo - wow
It WAS beautiful what we saw -- we were really lucky with weather. Even then I took too many through Uffizi windows and wish I'd gone to the hills where some of you go to get good shots. The David turned out better than I could have hoped, considering the strained circumstances, but what an incredible sculpture that is. As you can tell, I was just blown away by it, though I had seen pictures for years and didn't think it would be much more than a disappointment in person. Quite the contrary.
It was a boon to have the 'unfinished' Michelangelo sculptures in the next room.
But re the Duomo, that little Elph camera is amazing. Glad you enjoyed the photos - and thanks!
Hey, Andrys, thanks for your answers. I know that these things must seem obvious, but like I said, I'm still learning, and I'm still near the bottom of a steep learning curve. Appreciate the help and knowledge-sharing.
Just out of curiosity, when you used your Elph at the Duomo, did you use any manual settings, or were those shots on automatic? I own the Canon A520, which, in addition to automatic mode, has a manual mode, plus an aperture-only mode and a shutter speed-only mode. I'm still just playing around with automatic, but plan to venture out soon.
Terry, I wrote a long response and then my computer froze, due to a failing videocard. So you've lucked out and I will make it briefer :-) Anyway, nothing seems obvious; I'm just glad there's lots of time to eventually get through my manuals someday.
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Just out of curiosity, when you used your Elph at the Duomo, did you use any manual settings, or were those shots on automatic? I own the Canon A520, which, in addition to automatic mode, has a manual mode, plus an aperture-only mode and a shutter speed-only mode. I'm still just playing around with automatic, but plan to venture out soon.
In the Siena duomo, they allow only non-flash so I tended to use the little Elph's idea of "manual" which does allow me to set ISO and to make sure that flash is turned off.
I like to use shutter priority so that under bad light I can make sure the shutter opens and closes quickly. There's one nice feature on the Rebel XT and possibly on your A520. "AI Focus" allows you to lock autofocus on a still object but if the object suddenly moves, the camera will switch to 'Servo' mode which does constant re-focusing on a moving object. Pretty neat.
In normal light, my better pics were done in auto mode :-).
Digital pictures have two "sizes." One is the defined picture area size, and the other the file size. The former is basic, the latter depends on the resolution and amount of compression (JPEGging).
If you have a given image area, you can divide it into dozens, thousands or millions of pixels. The more pixels per inch of picture area, the higher quality. Think of it this way: if you're trying to distinguish between the messy details of far off foliage, each leaf occupies a given area of the standard picture size. If there is one pixel per leaf, each leaf is going to be a single square of one color. If there are ten pixels in that leaf area, you can have ten different colored squares portraying that leaf. Much better, eh?
I think the standard picture area size is 4" x 5" for a digital camera, so when you set a "size" of 2272 x 1704 you're actually defining the resolution of a 4" x 5" picture. That results in a file of a given "size" (a number of bytes) on your drive or card. As above, the more pixels, the greater the definition of details.
Now, when you "resize," you have to think about what you're doing. If you're trying to save space on your flash card, you can lower the resolution. That will result in a picture of the same area size in inches, but less pixels per inch. The computer file is thus smaller, because the program has to remember less information: fewer pixels. Get it? But of course fewer pixels at the same picture size mean less quality. A bunch of, say, ten pixels have been averaged out to one. If those ten pixels showed a leaf in detail, you now have one solid, single colored square. Some leaf!
That doesn't matter for the Web: monitors have 72 ppi, hence the standard. No sense in posting pix at 144 ppi if they are going to be rerezzed on screen!
But if you're going to print, it does matter, and it matters how you do it.
So, you first reduce the inch size, and keep the number of pixels intact. No information is lost! That's great for printing. The print size now fits your picture album, and you've preserved all your info. Of course, your file size is still the same on your drive. The program is remembering the same amount of info on pixels and colors, it's just remembering them as being smaller. To reduce file size, you reduce resolution, but do it at the smaller picture size, because the photo program will average pixels a bit more competently when it kows it's at a certain picture size. Nowadays with hard drive space so cheap, it hardly pays to reduce file size for print.
Thanks! Bucky "Trying To Slow Down" Edgett
Posts: 750 | Location: Maryland | Registered: 24 April 2006
I have read that you don't really need the highest resolution unless you are planning on printing very large photos (which I am not).
You should always try to shoot your digital photographs at the largest setting possible. My reasoning has nothing to do with printing has to do with the future.
I have digital photos shot the with 3.3 and 4.0 megapixel camera five years ago that I still can print them and view the on very large computer screens. You are shooting photographs to keep for a lifetime and you really do not know how you will be viewing them in the future.
Your problem will be is store your digital photographys for a lifetime.
Setting a lower resolution than the highest seems to us to defeat the object of the technology that has gone into the camera in the first place.
We use a canon 20d and always shoot in the highest raw file setting. For us this is important because some of our image buyers require the RAW image and our post processed image in TIF as well to prove the image is ours and genuine.
If space on the memory card is a problem then we sometimes reduce quality to get more shots but this happens rarely and only if we are stuck on top of a mountain without a spare card or a download facility.
If you ever want to enter you images into a competition, most rules and conditions require the original high res image along with your post processed image.(after you have cropped it etc)
shoot at the highest res possible invest in a 2 gig memory card always carry a spare memory card download the images as soon as possible to hard drive and clear your card.
Jpeg is a compression system so every time you work on an image in jpeg and then save it as a jpeg the quality is reduced (file is compressed).
Save your images as tag image file. TIFF/TIF. when saving after working on the image don't choose any compression. keep the file at full size.(It's not like space is a problem for most hard drives nowadays).
For printing save image at 350 dpi for monitor viewing save at 72 dpi
we use photoshop elements because it does everything we need and is far less technical than photoshop full versions. open your image choose your crop dimensions eg 15cm x 10cm choose dpi eg 72 crop picture
now your image is postcard size 15 x 10 with a dpi of 72
click on save for web and your image is down to 50 or so K ideal for use on Slowtrav.
You now have 3 files of the same picture.... original full res cropped to postcard size saved for web version.
Take a look at these images I posted earlier. all cropped to 10 x 15 and saved for web at 72 dpi
Clive - excellent explanation. I have Elements and will try this with my next photos. I jpegged my last batch of pics, but this sounds like what I'd rather be doing.
I tend to go on about it, so please ignore if you have read it before. I like a program called Irfanview which allows "batch conversion" of files - so I can change a large number of pictures at one time.
It allows you to change the size (number of pixel for width and height), Compression (Size in MB of the photograph - allowing you to trade quality for size) and the DPI. I have predefined various sets for Emailing (Small, high compression), Web use etc and now merely select the photos I wish to change , select an "Output" directory for the changes, and press "go"
Posts: 839 | Location: Hampshire, UK | Registered: 28 March 2005
Clive It may be my computer but if not thought I would alert you--when I went to your website to enjoy your wonderful photography, there was overlapping of a couple text sections and, apparently, images that were broken. If it is just my computer, I apologize for sending you off on a wild goose chase. Thanks for the great info re sizing, etc. I will now let go of JPEG in favor of TIFF. Is the only purpose of JPEG to decrease file size?
I checked my website and it seems to be working ok. Thanks for the tip though. You can see some more of our images at www.photosierra.co.uk
TIFF files come in several versions, but the most common is the uncompressed TIFF. An uncompressed TIFF file will capture all of the data from a camera’s image sensors. There is no loss and no degradation. Many digital cameras can take photos in TIFF format. The problem is that these files are so large that two or three can fill up the camera memory card. Because of their large size, it is not a good idea to e-mail uncompressed TIFF files.
JPEG is a format that was developed by the Joint Photographic Experts Group. It has become very popular and is the format that most digital cameras use as their default format.
JPEG, although the most common format used in digital cameras, uses lossy compression. That means that every time you save the file the picture quality degrades. Although the degradation is minor, multiple saves can result in a noticeable loss of quali
Slow Travel Talk 
When you download your photos into SlowPhoto, are they considered ready for viewing by all after they've been resized by SlowPhoto, or do you still get a chance to edit, caption, change the order, delete if necessary?
!! And I mean that as a high compliment - I've seen some of your albums already, but was not aware of all the others - I have so enjoyed hearing and reading about your travels - and I just finished looking through your Morning Markets in Provence - just so lovely, Kathy. Thanks for sharing. I intend to go through all your albums with a cup of chai and start dreaming and planning my future travels! 
