Digital Picture Questions??

With all this talk about digitals I’ve got some newbie questions.

I just got a 5mp camera and have been shooting pics with the highest quality resolution and compression just in case I want to get a 8×10 etc. This seems to pose a problem when I just want too send the pics via e-mail because they are large files, even in jpeg and because I use a 56k modem. Is there a fast way to degrade the pics from highest quality to e-mail quality? Even ftr wants only 100,000 bytes. Am I even asking the right question?? Also, when I download the pics the images are not as clear as I would have expected, they seem somewhat grainy. Do I need to change something? The pics I got developed seemed fine but on the screen they dont seem to do the pic justice? Thanks for any help.

What is likely happening is that photoshop or whatever you’re using to import the pictures (from the camera) is automatically sizing it to the screen size. To do this, it has to do some processing to get the size ‘down’ to fit your screen resolution and appear as a reasonable size.

To get the image size down, usually under the ‘edit’ menu or somewhere akin to that there is a ‘resize’ option. Change the units from inches to pixels, and try to get it into the 300-500 range in the biggest dimension, then save it as a jpeg.

Used to be that 300-500 on a side was a good size for web photos, because they loaded reasonably and still looked okay. Now everyone is running a T1 out of their house except a few stonagers like you and me, so a lot of people don’t think twice before posting mega-sized pictures.

To get things to look better on your screen, you can up the resolution and number of colors, but it does make everything else smaller on your screen as well, so there’s a trade-off as well.

Dirk your having the same problem I have… my pix are at 6.4 MP… thats a LOT of compression… and sometimes I have some issues when it removes all those pixels… sometimes they are fine… you just do the best you can… I usually use my fuji program that I use to upload my pix…. but photo shop or paint shop pro or most any software has the ability to change size… heres what I do…
I change it to 640 x 480 pixels and save is in basic JPG mode.. this gets it small enough to put on FTR… and ship to others…… but sometimes you will see some degradation of quality… the only thing you can do is shoot in lesser quality to be able to use them on the internet easier… this is why Im using my fuji’s movie mode…. its native 640 x 480.. and I can use it with the turn of a dial….. very easy….. it sucks storage like crazy… BUT I have 1.25 gig in my camera… which is quite a bit!…

I use adobe photoshop first I resize the pic to a reasonable size 4X6 or whatever, then I use the “save for web” option in Adobe and it takes the file down from thousands of bit to something nice… this works for the web and emailing, not so good if you are sending a pic someone wants to print themselves. Buy adobe photoshop if you don’t have it, with a camera that nice you should have the best software. What camera do you have do you like it? I currently have a Canon S45 (4 mp) seems to be a really nice camera IMO.

After I resized this pic is was almost 500K it is now like 48K I think it looks very, very similar to the orginal pic you can see it still looks high quality.

Ok guys….I’ve got a Cannon S50…When I use its bundled software (PhotoStudio 5) it is “compressing” the image to about 4×6 to view but when I send the photo by e-mail its huge (but real good quality it seems). Is that whats going on??

My manual says for 4×6 photos I can set the camera to 1600x1200pixels (Im currently at 2592×1944 and compression set at superfine). Is it actualy better to set it at 1600×1200 and fine compression for 4×6’s so there is less “stuff” the computer has to do? Or should I always use the highest quality possible when I want to develop 4×6’s at a photo shop?? I’ve got a high capacity flash card so thats not an issue. And when the computer has to take a high resolution photo and make it e-mail compatible I’m likely to lose some quality?? Right?? Fun stuff so far!!

Sounds like you’ve got all the salient points. Look at it this way: At home, I run my screen resolution at 800×600. That means that if it were to display the image in total, I could fit 1/4 of it on the screen at any given time. To make it easier to view and work with the pics, the software on your PC takes it from it’s ‘native’ format into something smaller that can fit on the screen and is easily viewable… It does the same thing when you print, and if you’re taking pictures at that high a resolution, the quality of the printouts will be limited only by the resolution of the printer (dpi).

When scanning pictures, they recommend a resolution of 150dpi to get ‘best quality’ and anything over that is, in theory, overkill. Think about that, for a 4×6 at the resolution you’ve selected, you’re at 400dpi, a factor of almost 3x. There should be no problem whatsoever concerning image quality as far as the camera end is concerned. The problem is that to really get the most out of it, your monitor and printer would have to also be screamin-mad high resolution.

For the true geeks out there (like me), it’s a fairly intersting method that photo programs use to get the image size down without massive distortion. Pretty gutsy-ugly stuff, but cool if you’re into it

Unless you know you want to print off a copy of your prize, use the lowest setting on your casmera. that way the size is what your ajusting. if you put 1600 pixils into a 3″x3″ pic over the net it will fly through the system and it will look great. But if you try to put that same quality of a pic into a 10″x10 ” there will be a ton of pixils in it and to send it through the net it will take a long time to get all those pix through the web…practice by sending pictures to yourself…you will learn a lot that way and no one will know….

Hey one problem is your computer monitor resolution might not be that high. I’d try increasing to 1024 X 768 or higher. Right click on your desktop and go to settings to check. As far as emailing them try http://www.irfanview.com it’s a freeware program and is very simple to use. You “save as, options” and lower the resolution by percentage for emailing or posting pix. I only have a 2MP camera and they look awesome on a 21″ monitor as well as printed out. I’d always recommend taking pix at highest resolution. You can always reduce quality later but you can’t increase it!
Large memory cards are CHEAP why scimp?

Ferny.