Tucson Estates Computer Users' Group

Home Computer Basics
Digital Photos Email
Files, Folders and Backup Keyboard Shortcuts Mouse Basics Protecting Your System
PDF Files Safeguarding Your Data Setting Up an ISP Account Surfing the Web
Glossary

Digital Photos

On Line Reviews

There are a number of web sites that provide reviews of cameras, scanners, printers and software. The best I have found is Steve's Digicams. Others include Digital Photography Review; Imaging Resources; Digital Camera Resources. In addition they often contain discussion forums and instructions on solving problems.

Pictures and Pixels

Pixels - picture elements - are what a digital picture is composed of. Your TV displays pictures using clusters of red, green and blue dots or bars. Your computer screen is similar. I have attempted to show a close up of the pixels on both an LCD computer screen (Figure 4-01) Figure 4-01
and a standard TV (Figure 4-02) Figure 4-01. Note the resolution, pixels per inch, is much finer on a computer display. This is why they can display text and images much sharper than on a TV (unless you have a high definitions TV). To work with digital pictures, a basic understanding of their construction is desirable. When the first digital cameras were produced, they had VGA resolution. This is an image that it 640 x 480 pixels. It nicely matched the computer screens which were usually VGA or SVGA (800 x 600 pixels). You could take a picture and send it attached to an E-mail with no problems. The files were usually less than 150 KB so they would send in less than one minute. All was happy and simple.

Then came the "my camera has more pixels than yours" race. Today's cameras usually have a minimum of 2 million (mega) pixels (1,600 x 1,200 pixels). Most have 3 or 4 mega pixels. While there are some cameras now being introduced with 8 million pixels, the largest in common use at the beginning of 2004 is 5 mega pixels. This can cause two problems. First a 5 mega pixel JPEG file is between 1,200 KB to over 2,000 KB. A file this size can take over 5 minutes to send on a dial up connection. Often your Internet Service Provider will also put a maximum size on the file you can send. Thus to use a picture from a 2 mega pixel or larger camera it needs to be compressed into a small file. This will be discussed later.

The next problem is you often get the complaint that the picture is too big to see. This is because most computer screens are set to display 70 pixels per inch. Thus is the picture is 2,560 pixels wide it would take a screen that is (2,560/70 = 36.5) over 36" wide to view it. The solution to this problem is simple. Most photo-editing software will automatically resize the pictures to display correctly, i.e. increase the resolution from 70 pixels per inch to allow the entire picture to be shown. This is also true for most viewers that Internet Service Providers provide. But if you are using a very old version of software, this capability may not be available. If you have a problem viewing E-mail photos, first try to upgrade your Internet software.

Compressing a Picture for E-mail

If this doesn't work, you can use Internet Explorer to view the pictures. Open Internet Explorer (IE) and click Help > About to find the version you have. If you do not have version 6.0 or greater, click Tools > Windows Update to go to the Microsoft web site where you can upgrade to 6.0. In IE 6.0 is Windows Fax and Picture Viewer. You will also need to set your JPEG viewing software to display JPEG files using either the Windows Fax and Picture Viewer. Set this using Windows Explorer > View > Options > File Types. See the sections on Updating Internet Explorer and File Management for more detailed instructions on this.

To compress a JPEG file small enough to send over the Internet you will probably need a photo-editing program. Many cameras and scanners include a photo-editing program with the product. If you do not have one, I recommend Adobe Photo Shop Elements. It can usually be purchased for less than one hundred dollars. Check at Sam's Club, CostCo, Best Buy, etc. for the best deals. You will need to open the picture in your photo-editing software (use Files > Open) and then save it using Files > Save As. Most photo-editing programs will give you the option of how much to compress the file.

Figure 4-03 Figure 4-03shows the File > Open and Save As commands for Adobe Photoshop Elements. The Save As command is "grayed out" as it cannot be used at the same time as the Open command. Select the picture you want to include in your E-mail and open it.

Now you need to save it using the Save As command. The Save command will not provide an option to change the compression. Using Save As, you will get a screen as shown in Figure 4-04. Figure 4-04
You need to also change either the File Name to a new name or save it in another directory. If you do not, you will overwrite you original photo and loose a lot of the details.

Figure 4-05 shows the JPEG Options screen. Figure 4-05 Most photo editing programs have a similar screen where the Quality of the file can be set. Here I have selected 3. The original file was 2,060 KB. The compressed on is 209 KB. Still a little on the large size but OK. When you compress a file like this, it looses a lot of details. Thus, if you try to print a large photo from it, it may appear blotch or "wet." This is the problem with "lossy compression" algorithms such as JPEG. This is why you want to save your original image in as high of quality JPEG as your camera allows. Professional photographers will not even use JPEG. They save their photos in what is called RAW or TIFF format. However this same 2,060 KB JPEG file would be over 20,000 KB in either RAW or TIFF.


Selecting a Digital Camera

The planned use of the camera and your pocketbook should determine the camera selection. If you only want photos for E-mail, a VGA (640x480) resolution will work. If you are into printing and want to be able to crop and blow up images, you may want to consider a 5 Mega-pixel camera. The second consideration is the zoom capability. Note digital zoom is useless. It only crops out a portion of the picture and blows it up. This can be done better with your editing software. If possible turn off digital zoom. Optical zoom is available up to 10x. If you want to take pictures of animals or other items that are difficult to get close to, having a good optical zoom is important. If you only want family pictures, then you do not need to spend money for a large optical zoon.

Also consider the Macro capability. Macro is the ability to take very close up pictures. If you want photograph jewelry, flower blooms, etc. then you want to check out the camera's macro capability.

Many digital video cameras will also make digital still pictures. However, they do not offer the higher resolution of the normal still cameras.

I recommend you spend a couple of nights on the web reading about cameras and technology at Steve's web site, http://www.steves-digicams.com/>http://www.steves-digicams.com. He has reviewed most digital cameras.

Selecting a Scanner

If you have regular photos, slides or film that you want to convert to digital photos, you need a scanner. With a scanner and photo-editing software, you can even recover faded photos. You can repair tears, spots, or someone's teeth. The options with photo-editing software are almost endless.

The key factors in selecting a scanner is your intended use and bundled software. A scanner with a USB2 or Firewire (also known as IEEE 1394) connection will download images much faster. If you want to scan negatives or slides, be sure to have this option. This means the scanner must have a light source that will project through the slide or film. Cannon and Epson seems to hve the lead in doing this. If you primary interest is in scanning slides or film, there are custom scanners that only do slides and film.

I recommend a minimum resolution of 1200 dpi and a color depth of 24 bits. Note if it lists a resolution such as 1200 x 2400, only the smallest number really counts. If you later want to make a print of one of the images you have scanned, you need to scan it at a high enough resolution to allow a minimum of 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final print size. For example, if you want to scan a 2"x3" photo and then print a 6"x9" photo (a magnification of 3), you need to scan it at a minimum of 900 dpi. Again I recommend spending time with Steve's site.

Photo-Editing Software

You will often find photo-editing software bundled with you digital camera or scanner. However, a very useful photo-editing program can be downloaded free from Picasa. If not, a good pricing source pricing is Amazon. They list over 100 current software programs. Some of the ones I know and their prices are as follows: Microsoft Picture It! ($29.99); Microsoft Picture It! Digital Image Pro ($89.99); Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 ($89.98); and Jasc After Shot Premium Edition ($44.99). These are basic programs. Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7.0 ($96.99) is a serious editing program with most of the features of the professions program Adobe Photoshop 7.0 ($596.99).

However, when all is said and done, I recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements. It is easy to use, includes most editing capability that is needed (only a very serious professional needs more), has printing and panorama making software. If you learn it, it should serve all your needs. For this reason, I have used it for illustrating the various photo functions. (Note the particular screen shots I have used in the illustrations are from version 1.1. But there are only minor appearance changes in version 2.0).

Panorama Photos

One of the nice things about digital pictures is you can stitch several together to get a very wide panorama photo.

There is a good example of how to do this at Photo Stitching Digial Panoramas

Printing Pictures

Photoshop Elements also includes printing software. You really can print more than one picture per page and control the size of the pictures. However, the command is slightly hidden. Go to File > Automate > Picture Package. Figure 4-10
Figure 4-10 shows the Picture Package. Note you may select from a number of different print sizes. In this example, I chose two 5x7 prints. Figure 4-11
Figure 4-11 Shows the Picture Package with the photos inserted.

If you want to print a large picture, you need software that will interpolate between pixels to create an array large enough for your printer. Again Adobe Photoshop will do this. However if you want to do 11 x 17 prints, you should consider buying custom software. The best software for this that I have found is Digital Domain Inc.'s $44.95 Qimage Pro for digital image printing. You have to download it. Its file size is 4.9 MB. You may try for free for 30 days. Future updates are free.

A color wheel to help you in matching color is located at Color Wheel.

To explain many of the printing and editing options available from Adobe Photoshop Elements would take many more pages and is beyond the scope of this paper. There are a number of good books available on editing photos, matching colors, etc. Again I recommend a good starting place is Steve's website.