DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS
– Their Care and Handling
The
wide range in the quality of digital photographs submitted to Flying
Fish makes me suspect that a short piece on the subject is overdue. I
hope those who prefer traditional film will forgive me and move on to
the next article, as will the many who already use their digital
cameras to best advantage.
As
with ordinary film, where (with certain exceptions) the slower the
film the finer the grain, digital cameras make a trade-off between
the size and quality of each picture and the number of photographs
that can be fitted on to the removable storage card.
Most cameras (and from this point on
for ‘camera’ read ‘digital camera’) have a
range of settings including RAW, TIFF and various JPG qualities from
fine to basic. Leaving out the theory and sticking with
practicalities, TIFFs take up too much space on the card and RAW
require specialised processing programs, so for most purposes –
including photos likely to be submitted to Flying Fish –
FINE (high quality) JPG setting is the best compromise.
It may also be possible to adjust final
image size in the camera, certainly on more powerful models, again
with a trade-off between image size and storage space. The safest
choice is to go for the largest dimensions possible – which may
in any case not be as large as they at first appear. Digital cameras
normally store photographs at 72dpi (dots per inch), which looks fine
on a computer screen but very fuzzy if printed. The standard for
colour printing, including Flying Fish, is 300dpi. Fortunately
it takes only seconds to convert one to the other (and I’m very
happy to receive pictures at either definition), but what you gain in
quality you lose in size. In other words, a photo which would look
fine at 56.3 x 42.5 cm (22.2 x 16.7 inches) on a computer screen must
be reduced to 13.5 x 10.2cm (5.5 x 4 inches) to do itself justice on
paper. And a Flying Fish page is almost 15cm (6 inches)
wide...
Hopefully these two settings –
fine and large – will allow a reasonable number of pictures to
be fitted onto the storage card. If they do not – and the card
supplied with a new camera is often tiny – the simplest option
may be to upgrade. A spare card is a wise investment in any case, and
fortunately prices are dropping all the time. They’re your
photos and you want them to look their best.
So far so good, but next comes the bit
that many people seem unaware of. Once transferred to computer, a
picture stored in TIFF mode can be opened, altered (rotated, cropped,
colour adjusted, etc) and closed again ad infinitum without
loss of quality – in fact, assuming it’s done
competently, this manipulation can improve a photograph immensely.
However, every time you open a JPEG, make some adjustments and save
it again, there will be a loss of quality. The actual dimensions of
the picture don’t decrease but the detail and overall quality
do. The losses may not be noticeable on a computer screen, but they
are when the picture is printed on paper.
For once the solution – at least
so far as Flying Fish is concerned – is very simple. Do
absolutely nothing! If you plan to write an article and illustrate it
with digital photos, unless you have the time, interest and knowledge
to transfer your photos into TIFF format, enhance them, and then send
me the resulting TIFF files on CD, just keep the original JPEGs
exactly as they came off the camera and send me those. Please
be sure to transfer them to the CD using the ‘copy’
command, not by opening and re-saving, or we’re back to
square one and quality will be lost.
If you don’t have access to a CD
burner, by all means e-mail me the original JPEGs (e-mailing TIFFs is
rarely practical due to their size), but please let me know in
advance how many you’ll be sending and wait for me to reply
(generally within 12 hours) before you despatch them. (This is
because photos occupy a good deal of space in a mailbox, and unless I
empty mine promptly you’ll be preventing anyone else from
sending anything, however important and urgent ... and believe me,
it’s happened!) Also, while the ‘virtual mailbox’
is reasonably large, the ‘slot’ appears to be quite
small. Attach six or eight photos to a single e-mail and they won’t
fit through – attach them to several e-mails in twos or threes
and they should be fine.
So what do I do when I receive your
JPEGs? Convert them straight into TIFF format, that’s what.
After that I may straighten the horizon, enhance the colour, ‘paint
out’ anything which really doesn’t want to be there (like
the skipper’s elbow in one corner...) and maybe sharpen it all
up a bit. It’s quite amazing how much one can improve a
run-of-the-mill photograph if the necessary ‘background
information’ is still there. Compress it too much and this
option is lost – and I absolutely hate it when, despite all my
best efforts, the picture you’ve taken the trouble to send me
doesn’t do either you or Flying Fish justice.
Right – that’s quite enough
non-sailing stuff for one issue. Happy snapping!
Anne
Hammick, Editor
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