Digital Photos
You can save a lot of space as well as uploading and downloading time by preparing Digital photos before using them in publications etc.
The digital photo displayed was originally 2592 pixels wide and 1944 pixels high (that is about 36 centimetres wide by 27 cm high. It was 2.8Megabytes in file size.
The first image has not been cropped but has been resized to 7.3cm by 4.9cm. Its filesize has also been compressed. It is now 81kb in size (around 300 times smaller file size than the original - a great saving). {Note: one megabyte = 1000 kilobytes}
The second photo has been cropped and resized so it is now 6cm by 5.5cm and also compressed. It also is around 81kb in size even though it shows more detail of the Kenyan student (who, by the way did a public reading of a very moving poem about life in Nairobi, as well as wrote and performed in a lengthy play on the subject of Aids and female circumcision - the conflict between traditional culture and the pressures of today).
If digital photos are properly prepared:
Email will be quicker for you to send and for the receiver to download.
Powerpoint Presentations, Publisher and Word documents will be faster to save and take up less disk space.
Web Albums and Web Pages will load more quickly.
Important Keep in mind inter-generation deterioration of image quality and resolution: Vital if you require quality and sharp images and printed copies.
Preparing Photos for publication involves some or all of the following:
Crop – trim unwanted areas from around the main subject of the photo.
Re-size – change the full-size view of the photo to the dimensions you require in your publication.
Optimise – change the file-size of the photo on disk by using file compression to the optimum: minimum file-size for acceptable quality.
Two essential strategies:
- Always save an edited image with a different filename from the original.
- If you ever need to re-work a photo always start again from the original. You will get a better result than re-editing a compressed image.
If you follow these last two strategies your original remains unchanged and the resolution of any re-editing is not compromised.
If you have a pattern for filenames you will easily know which are the originals and which are the edited images.
Examples of filenames:**
175_7529 - original
175_7529o – optimised
175_7529to - optimised thumbnail (small size)
175_7529ao - optimised and adjusted (ie large crop or major re-size)
Note: I always retain the camera generated numeric filename for each photo - making it easier to locate the original for an edited photo.
Computer Programs for editing digital photos
These range from expensive and powerful graphic editors like Photoshop to simple free programs. They include:
- Photoshop Elements (Reasonably priced graphic editor by Adobe which includes many of its photoshop tools etc).
- paint.net
- picasa
- irfanview - a very popular free graphic editor
- image optimizer - My notes on using image optimizer.
Examples of displaying digital photos
- Albums - Display sets of photos in organised albums.
- books - Online Publishing - Shows -Electronic Books
How to... Hints and Recipes
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