[Rhodes22-list] Stan's need for picture editor

[John Lock]

At 11:11 AM 2/22/2008 -0800, Just bent wrote:
>why don't you set your camera to take pictures at a resolution you can use,
>then you have to do nothin.

Every photographer in the world just flinched instinctively. ;-)

Dialing the resolution down on the camera would be the same as using 
the wrong chemistry to develop a film negative (to use an old 
analogy).  You're throwing away most of the image data captured by 
the camera and severely limiting its uses later on (like for printing).

Besides, we're talking about two different things here.  Stan's main 
complaint was that the images were just coming out too large when 
displayed.  This has very little to due with the file size.  It has 
everything to do with the pixel dimensions it was saved at.

Two examples - you could have a 2048x1365 pixel image that only has a 
file size of 200K or so, but you would find it very difficult to view 
on a normal monitor.  OTOH, you could have an 800x600 pixel image 
that looks very nice, but is over a 1,000K in file size.  Those 
variations are a function of the JPEG compression level applied when 
the image is saved.

As a general rule, digital cameras should always be set to save 
photos at the highest "quality" setting possible.  If your camera has 
a RAW setting, even better, use it.  This is your digital negative 
and should be preserved as such.  You can make all sorts of copies of 
that for every purpose you can think off, being careful not to save 
over your original file.

Resizing an original digital image for web or e-mail is a simple 
process as long as you keep in mind some pixel guidelines.  Keep the 
longest side less than 1024 pixels and 95% of users will be able to 
view it without scrolling or truncation.

Cheers!

John Lock
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s/v Pandion - '79 Rhodes 22
Lake Sinclair, GA
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