Taking pictures – dos and don’ts Cropping Re-sizing Uploading Wondered why images look blocky or fuzzy What I am going to give you is rules of thumb. Digital images sometimes can be a bit tricky, so in order not to confuse you, I’m not going to mention a few things. However, if you do come across these things in the future, just let me know and I’ll help you out
A picture says a million words – we all know that. What we’ll run through today is about understanding what an image is, what the sizes mean
First let’s look at the basics. An image is made up of millions of tiny squares, pixels. A pixel – smallest part of an image the more pixels packed into an image the better the quality. On most digital images, a pixel is around 3mm each
How do they relate to sizes? We measure images by the number of pixels When working with images on the internet, we’re usually safe in assuming that there are 72 pixels in an inch So ..
This image is 2560x1960 Would take 560 seconds to look at on a dial up internet connection 3.5MB
Now it is 250x180 Would take 5 seconds 66kb
So what about types of images, images can be saved as various types – these are the 4 main ones For internet use, we like the first 2 PNG - Portable Network Graphics format is a completely loss-less compression. Gradients come out much smoother and do not have the distortions that may appear in a JPG. JPG - JPG's support over 16 million colors, but slightly "distort" the image to compress the file size. For photos, the human eye cannot tell the subtle changes in color, but along straight edges and in pictures with large solid colors, distortion becomes very apparent. PSD - PhotoShop Document supports millions of colors. This file format also has exceptional image quality, but it does not compress your file so file sizes will be large and uploading times will be long. TIFF - Tag Image File Format is similar to a PSD file but the layers are flattened. Uploading times will be long. BMP - MS Windows Bitmap Format - Saves your file pixel for pixel, Supports Millions of colors, the drawback is extremely large file sizes, which translates into extremely long upload times. AI - Adobe Illustrator Not Acceptable EPS - Encapsulated PostScript - Supports Millions of color and must be saved in Bitmap Form. Vector form is not acceptable.
What are they used for? GIF - Graphic Interchange Format. One of the oldest formats, it’s also one of the most popular and versatile. It’s ideal for logos, cartoons and similar material. GIFs contain up to 8 bit colour – that’s 256 colours. A benefit is that the background of a GIF can be made transparent, so you see the background colour of the browser window you're in. GIFs can also be animated. JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group. (pronounced JAY-peg ) This format uses a lossy compression system, meaning that some
Now I’ll show you how we can upload images, but first about saving
What is wrong with these?
So let’s have a go at re-naming images – but first, let’s look at image properties in my pictures. You can find out a lot about your images from this folder
Let’s now have a go – choose my pictures > image workshop > saving exercise Have a look – select thumbnails Now rollover the images Now right click and select rename Now rename these – see what you think School of thought about including keywords in your image titles
Exercise – rename the images I have put on called saving exercise To re-name an image, click once and retype Don’t forget to click THUMBNAILS to view the iamges Also notice… roll over the image and see the pixel sizes
So how do we get images onto our computers Is everyone happy with getting an image from a digital camera onto their computer? – If not show…
Pay for images - download them on to your pc. Good quality and well shot Look at these
Free images It is important to remember that all images are the copyright of the photographer and therefore permission should be sought before using. Let’s now go onto these sites and have a look for ourselves
Photoshop £400
Cropping is Cutting Go to flauntr and show or use IRfan view
Shrinking – we can’t really increase the size of images – look blocky or fuzzy Get your shape right first May need crop and re-size a few times to get an iamge to the right size Show on flauntr
At 100% pixel size 3072 x 2304 3 MB – take someone 346 seconds on a dial up to get the picture
But if you reduce it too much you get a pixellated look compressed to 10%