Hi,
As a few of you know I recently posted my pics. on the 'My pictures' post. As you also may know, I wasn't entirely happy as a novice with the outcome. First off, I do know that alot of what I saw was due to my inexperience. Secondly, I do realise that as wonderful as it is, the Fz30 is it does have some limitations. So my questions are more about how I could have maximized my shots by working on them after the fact by editing etc. I used elements 4.

Questions:
1. I was dissappointed that I couldn't upload my best 'money' shots (leopard, cheetah yawning) that were taken in tiff. format onto the Kodak site and when I had to bring them down to a jpeg. they really got diluted. Is there anyway to prevent this?

2. Cropping - Pros and cons. Should you manually resize yourself or let the program do it. I found it horribly tedious doing it myself but when I allowed the program to do it I feel I lost out on quality or it would recommend the wrong size often.
Any opinions appreciated.
Thanks ahead;
Sherry

Hi Sherry, I am no photo expert and still continue to use 35mm as well as digital: re programs I use Photoshop.

So I've always taken photos in JPEG format at the largest file size. Then, when uploading to the PC I save as JPEG with a little sharpening.

When reducing images to use on the net I usually size my images 500 x 375: when you reduce the size don't forget to add a tiny amount of sharpening.

And when saving for web I tend to save at 75 % quality which gives very little degredation but allows faster download times.

Hopes this helps, there are better people out there than me to offer advice.

Matt

Hello Sherry,

In answer to your questions:

1. To minimise detail loss, make sure your sliders are set to 'minimum compression' when you convert from TIFF to JPEG.

Note that many photographers (me included) prefer to load lower-quality images for viewing on Fodors so that they load more quickly. Try compression at different levels to see where you start becoming dissastisfied, and use the maximum amount of compression possible.

2. I always crop my photos myself -- it is a bit tedious, but there's no way your computer is going to have the same aesthetic eye that you do.

Cheers,
Julian

cybor-
1)I don't understand the "work flow" here, you say-
-that were taken in tiff. format onto the Kodak site and when I had to bring them down to a jpeg. they really got diluted.-
Does Kodak site take them as tiffs? Or are you changing the tiffs into jpgs first? If Kodak is taking the tiffs, I would not do that but send Kodak jpgs.
2)Also you say-
-yourself or let the program do it-
What program, are you talking about Kodak or Elements 4? Cropping is usually, for me, a photo by photo task.
3)For that "wow, wonderful pictures" punch internet viewing, you need to over sharpen and over color saturate the images. (For most viewers)
regards - tom

Thanks for your replies.
Matt - is the 500 x 375 good for all resizing for 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 going on to the Kodak site?
I would also like to make 11x 17 prints - how would you resize for that?

Julian - I'll try the slider for compressing. I have been doing all my own cropping and from what your saying it sounds like there's no easy way around it - true? I'm very lazy but I do want good results.
Do you think one of my problems may be that my definition is so high and good on my new monitor that when viewed elsewhere i.e. on the net or when making prints that the crispness just isn't coming thru? Do I need to sharpen to the point that they look oversharpened on my screen. Is there such a thing as over sharpening?

Tom - Sorry, I should have been clearer. I assumed wrongly, that all posters knew that the Kodak site does not accept tiffs and can not bring them down to a jpeg. The reformatting into jpeg was done by me back in photoshop.

Thanks for bearing with me as I know I'm not articulating these questions properly.
Appreciate your help;
Sherry

one more thing, sorry - I just need to understand sharpening. Is it basically tightening (pulling) pixals closer together? For instance, say you have a fuzzy outline, would sharpening pull the outline into a crisp more defined line?

cybor-
Sharpening - what you describe is mostly resolution.
Sharpening has to do with edges. The transistion from a dark edge to a light edge. Or, light edge to dark edge, however you want to look at it. The quicker (fewer grey steps in between) the transisition from dark to light the sharper the edge appears to be. These letters typed here are sharp because the edge transistion is abrupt from white to black. If the letter edge had greyness associated with it, the edge would appear fuzzy. Not sharp.
To make edges appear sharper we increase the contrast along edges.
When an edge is "over" sharpened you start to see a white outline, a halo, along the edge. Yet the right amount of sharpening will make the image look cleaner, as if haze has been removed.
Here is a wonderful explanation by Ron Bigelow.
http://ronbigelow.com/articles/sharpen1/sharpen1.htm
regards - tom

In fact, just take a look at Ron Bigelow's web site. Especially his article on "Advanced Composition". He discusses EVERYTHING that makes a good photograph.
http://ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm
regards - tom

Thanks Tom for the good info. This explains why my Eland shot looked so odd to me - he was over sharpened and almost looked like he was seperate from the background with an odd halo around him. This oversharpening was done by my camera rather than my editing. That particular photo was taken on auto. I wonder if the camera over compensated due to the similarity of the Eland and background colors.
I'll have to try to (un)sharpen him.
Sherry

Sherry, when you convert to jpeg, are you saving the tiff file? When I work with photos, I always work with a copy and save the original. Then if you don't like how it converted or how you cropped it you can start over. I also didn't think there was any "dilution" when converting to jpeg the first time. I know if you keep changing and saving jpegs you do loose information.

When I save a copy to use on the web, I start with the original, make a copy, play with it (Image/Adjustments/Levels, Photo Filter, Hue & Saturation and Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask) and then I resize it. If I'm resizing for printing, I resize or crop to the size I want to print and save it in a folder (Africa 2005 to print). Then I resize again for the web and save it in another folder (Africa 2005 for web). When I size for the web, I change the image size to resolution 72 and pixel dimension 650 x whatever. You can't print these web sized images but they load fast (and noone else can copy that image off the web because they are too small and not enough resolution for anything).

I'm one of the people that learn best by "show me" and not by reading the book. It took me forever to figure out that PS has a tool that you can tell it the dimensions of the photo size you want. Then drag it on the image and it gives an outline of the dimensiions. Then you can drag in the corners and move the whole box around to crop it the best way. Then you click on the crop tool and your image is cropped and resized for the print size.

Too hot and sticky here... no energy for long reply but will post more on TIFF/ JPG, colour space, resolution, sharpening, cropping, resolution/ resizing, prepping for printing/ web display and so on tomorrow or Tuesday...

Sherry-

Your comment about making 11x17 prints lead me to believe that your focus is making pictures of your best shots over just sharing them. If that is the case, convert to jpeg with the highest quality (least compression) as recommended above. I don't know at what stage Easyshare might compress your photos for their own convenience. I have a (totally unproven) suspicion that their quick upload tool is quick in part because they compress the pics before uploading.

Try ordering a few large prints from Kodak but if you're not happy look around for a more professional developing service. I believe that CNET has reviews periodically and they separate fun photo sharing from serious printing.

-Matt

Oyy,
This stuff makes my brain hurt. It was the same way with autocad but with practice one will learn - true?

Sundowner - I'm with you as far as being a visual being.
I have been playing with the the dragging and dimension tool as suggested and think I may have a handle on that.

Matt - Your right about my concern now being printing rather than putting photos up on the Kodak site, as I already did that. I had a local shop make up a few 11x17 on inexpensive paper just for laughs initially and they weren't half bad - for an ametuer at least. The problem came about when I started messing with my photos too much in an uneducated fashion. I still keep feeling that my original tiffs are better than the reformatted jpegs. Is that nonsense?

Can someone easily explain to this novice the difference between a tiff. jpeg and raw photo as taken on the camera. Be gentle with the jargon, please.
Much appreciative;
Sherry

Sherry, this isn't what you asked but I just discovered this website and thought I would share it. http://www.radiantvista.com/video_tutorials/page1/

I just watched "Sizing Files for the Web" and it's so easy to understand and figure out what to do. There are a couple more that I want to watch - sharpening & adjustment layers. Maybe they will be helpful to you.

Sherry-

In terms of editing, definitely heed the advice given by sundowner and keep an untouched image in reserve. If you start fiddling with your original file you may never be able to go back.

As far as the file types are concerned, I can offer a few ideas but I am no expert. A RAW image saves every bit of information from the camera's CCD sensor. Quoting from dcresource.com's fz30 review: "Because it's raw data, you can change things like white balance, sharpness, and saturation without lowering the quality of the original image. So if you screwed up the white balance you can fix it -- it's like taking the shot all over again. At this time, however, there's no way to do that with the FZ30's RAW files (Photoshop CS2 does not support the camera yet)."

JPEG is a compressed format. The camera applies it's white balance, sharpening, noise reduction etc. It throws away info from the sensor based on those parameters. Then the camera compresses the file size using various algorithms so the image uses less space. In fine mode this is usually OK but you never get something (smaller file) for nothing.

TIFF should be like JPEG but without the compression. It should be smaller than a RAW file but for some reason on the FZ30 that's not the case.

In terms of going from TIFF to JPEG, be very careful about the settings in your software when you go to "save as." The bottom line may be that the program doesn't do the best job with the conversion.

Why not just find an online printer who takes jpegs. This review from the fall gave highest marks to fujifilm.net and photoworks, both of whom take TIF (I think):

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6451_7-....html?tag=lnav

-Matt

Sundowner - thanks one more time - good info.

Matt - your explanation makes sense and would explain why my tiffs seem to have more clarity than the jpegs. thanks for the good resources. To compress or not to compress - many decisions

I will practice some editing this weekend.

Sherry

Excuse me for repeating some of what has been explained above, it's easier for me to write it as an explanation from scratch, if that's ok?

There are lots of terms that are useful (if not entirely necessary) to understand if one really wants to understand <b>why</b> one is advised to do things a certain way – terms like colour depth, white balance, noise reduction, sharpening, TIFF, JPEG, compression, artifacts, resolution, dpi and so on.

I’ll try and go through some of these as straightfowardly as I can, please let me know where I’ve not been clear enough.

The first thing to understand is what data a digital camera records.

A <b>digital camera sensor</b> is actually an array of tiny photo sensors – each one contributes one pixel to the recorded image. Sensors are just photon (light) receptors – they record how much light they receive, not what colour the light is. So the value they record is just a measurement of lightness/ darkness. But filters are applied over the array alternating red, green and blue so that certain receptors are now only sensitive to red light, others only to blue light and the rest only to green light. This results in three channels of information, recorded as tonal values, one for each colour.

Most digital sensors capture 4096 levels of tones in each of the three colour channels. This is referred to as <b>colour depth</b>.

The human eye can't actually discern that many levels of tones – imagine looking at a scale of greys (from white at the left and black at the right) which is split into 4096 little bars, one for each tone of grey – you would just not be able to perceive the difference between many of the bars at all. Infact, if you were to reduce the number of different greys making up a (black and white) photograph from 4096 to just 256 you wouldn’t readily be able to perceive the difference! It works similarly in a colour photograph – the human eye can’t really perceive the difference between a photograph that has 256 levels in each of the three colour channels and one that has 4096 levels in each colour channel.

A colour depth of 256 colours is referred to as 8 bit depth. A colour depth of 4096 colours is referred to as 12 bit depth though as it’s often referred to as 16 bit for reasons that aren’t important here.

I’ll come back to this later when comparing RAW and JPEG.

Let’s move on to <b>white balance</b>. White balance is related to the colour of the light under which the image was captured.

Human eyes automatically adapt to different lighting situations and we compensate for the colour of the light without really noticing. We interpret the brightest thing in the scene as white and everything else accordingly, even when that brightest thing actually has a blue or yellow tint from the light colour. But when we look at a photographic representation of the same scene our eyes don’t make that same adjustment and we suddenly really notice that the light had a strong yellow colour cast which no longer appears natural to us.

White balance settings allow us to tell the camera what colour light is lighting the scene so that the camera or the conversion software can compensate accordingly.

If the lighting is blue, the colours can be shifted towards the yellow slightly. If the lighting is yellow, the colours can be shifted towards the blue slightly. This restores the colour balance to a more neutral one, neutral being considered to be closes to the effects of natural sunlight.

I’ll come back to this later when comparing RAW and JPEG.

One of the things I haven’t yet referred to is <b>dynamic range</b>. Dynamic range is the difference between the darkest and lightest levels of brightness that your camera can accurately capture. The total range of brightness values encountered in the real world is about 10 stops though an average scene may not contain quite that many. Although it varies between models a digital camera sensor can, on average, capture detail through about 5 stops. If the scene you are trying to capture contains more than 5 stops of brightness you will either lose detail in the brightest or darkest areas depending on the camera exposure settings you select.

In reality a digital camera sensor actually records a little over 5 stops of data but the data at each extreme is often less reliable. In the darkest areas those photon sensors we talked about before might only be recorded a minute amount of light hitting them and this can be skewed more by the tiniest amounts of stray light here or there. In the lightest areas, there may be so much light, particularly of one colour, that the camera can’t distinguish and blows out to pure white.

I’ll come back to this later when comparing RAW and JPEG.

<b>What is a JPEG? </b>

The name of this file format is not really relevant but incase you’re curious it comes from the acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group who developed it as a standard format for compression of graphic files.

The compression algorithms reduce the size of a graphic file by discarding some image data. JPEG compression can make a file very small, but it is &quot;lossy,&quot; meaning that image information and quality is lost when the image is compressed.

JPEG cannot support 16 bit/ channel colour depth.

When you save an image file as a JPEG you are asked to specify the quality of image you want. Since the highest quality results in the largest file, you can make a trade-off between image quality and file size.

High level compression is generally used for images intended to be displayed on the web where quality loss is not as important and where small file size is paramount. Where it is used for print images it is advisable to use it at the lowest level of compression in order to minimise loss of quality.

Each time you resave a jpeg the compression algorithms are reapplied leading to progressive loss in quality.

Common artifacts of too much compression include jagged edges to what should be smooth and sharp lines, odd patches of colour banding and loss of detail in some areas of the image.

<b>What happens when digital cameras save the information recorded by the sensor directly to the JPEG format? </b>

Before writing the image information to the compact flash card in JPEG format the onboard camera software discards 3840 of the 4096 tones in each colour channel, applies automatically selected white balance settings, applies in-camera sharpening and usually it also makes some adjustments to colour saturation, contrast, noise reduction and antialiasing.

Whilst the effects of some of these changes can be somewhat adjusted during post-processing they cannot be reversed – data that has been discarded or heavily adjusted cannot be restored.

Most digital cameras offer a variety of JPEG options at varying pixel dimensions and image quality. Depending on the setting selected, compression is also applied, further impacting on quality of the final image.

<b>What about RAW? What advantages does it give me?</b>

I told you about colour depth above.

A RAW file records the full 4096 (12 bit) colours in each channel. A JPEG discards most of the tones and saves only 256 in each channel. That’s a huge amount of data thrown away but why does it matter? Surely if we can’t discern it with the human eye anyway it’s not relevant?

It matters a lot if we want to post process the image further (in applications like Photoshop, PaintShop Pro and others). Adjustments in contrast in particular will often compress some of the information in one tonal area and stretch it out in another. Where there are only 256 tones of data this stretching can often lead to uneven gradiations (posterisation) between tones/ colours that are clearly visible as banding.

Working with RAW allows us to convert the file keeping all 4096 tones for each colour channel. Stretching tonal areas out with this many colours doesn’t matter as there is enough data not to lead to that horrible banding effect.

Once we have finished all our post-processing we can, at that point, convert the colour depth down to 8 bit.

I do have some visual examples of this issue which aren’t easy to share online but do let me know if this isn’t clear.

What about white balance?

When capturing in JPEG the camera applies the white balance adjustments to the data as it records it.

If it is necessary to adjust colour balance for an image shot as a JPEG (to compensate for incorrect white balance settings at time of shooting) the edit can be quite destructive of data and as we discussed above, there’s less data to play with in the first place.

However, when capturing in RAW format the camera doesn't adjust the values of the data it's recording. It simply stores the white balance settings that you had set on your camera alongside the rest of the image data so that the RAW convertor can apply the adjustments at the point of conversion.

The advantage of RAW here is that if the white balance setting is wrongly selected (by the user or by the camera's automatic selection) the setting recorded can be completely ignored on conversion and a different setting applied in the convertor. The setting can also be fine tuned to points between the pre-defined white balance settings. One can even deliberately apply the &quot;wrong&quot; white balance setting to achieve a specific effect.

I talked above about what the camera discards when it saves as a JPEG. I didn’t mention the fact that it discards those extremities of dynamic range that the sensor picks up and uses the data squarely in the main 5 stops of dynamic range captured.

When you go into a RAW convertor all the data is there, including that extra half a stop, sometimes more of dynamic range. This gives a huge latitude to compensate for over and underexposure at the time of shooting. For those photographers who are technically perfect and always nail the perfect exposure, this isn’t much of an advantage. For photographers like me who have often misjudged exposure by a small amount, this is a huge boon and has really allowed me to save a shot that would have been junked had I shot in JPEG.

The last advantage of shooting in RAW is that I retain full control over additional post-processing such as sharpening, noise reduction, colour saturation and contrast.

Given that these adjustments are usually different for each image it makes more sense to be able to apply them manually in post-processing.

Sharpening in particular should be applied as the last stage of post-processing as you’ll want to use different settings for a small image for posting on the web and a large image for printing. Infact, those who are really serious about the detail will actually apply different sharpening settings depending on exactly which kind of printing device is being used!

By the way, understanding sharpening is a whole other topic and one I won’t try and include here but I could probably write something up on it if anyone needed it?

I also haven’t covered resolution v. dpi here – again I could do so at a later date if required.

Kavita

Kavita,
Thanks so much for taking the time to post such helpful information. You seemed to clearly explain my questions. Appreciate it.

I am confused though on saving data. This was briefly covered earlier by sundowner and yourself.

Question: will the original tiff be diluted or affected EACH time one compresses to jpeg if saved as sundowner suggested in different files? Each time I compress I get 1 copy of the new photo and keep the original which I assumed remained untouched - no?

As some of my pics. are reformatted a few times off the same file, I would like to upload a few of the different versions of a single photo to see if there's a visual difference. If you don't mind, take a look later at &quot;My Pictures&quot; to see if you can tell which pictures came straight from the original and which were further along and therefore 'diluted'. I'll place them at the end of the run.
Many thanks ahead;
Sherry

Oh god, I'm sorry, I completely forgot about explaining TIFF! (I got distracted by making a packing list for our trip to Wales tomorrow).

TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format (name irrelevant) and is a lossless image format. You can save uncompressed TIFFs, which can lead to very large file sizes indeed, or compressed TIFFs. BUT unlike JPEGs the compression used is referred to as lossless (rather than lossy, as with JPEGs). What that means is that the data is compressed only using clever tricks such as noting that these 1000 pixels are the same colour so instead of noting each one separately, we can note the colour information once and then list which pixels is applies to. I mean, it's not really important to understand how it works, but to appreciate that there is NO loss of data nor the resulting compression artifacts that come with loss of data. The downside is that the compression is not as effective in reducing file size and a compressed TIFF is still much bigger than a compressed JPEG. The most common compression method for TIFFs is LZW, I have no idea what that stands for. Because TIFF compression is lossless the image quality will NOT be affected each time you resave changes, unlike a jpeg.

Another important aspect of TIFF is that it CAN support 12/16 bit colour depth.

Some cameras do not allow you to shoot in RAW but do offer TIFF. You do lose many of the advantages of RAW (white balance is applied by the camera, as it is for a jpeg and you haven't got the exposure compensation latitude that you have with RAW). That said, most camera models that support TIFF do allow you to turn off onboard sharpening, saturation and contrast adjustments and so on giving control back to you.

Oh and I should also have stressed how much I second the advice to always keep a copy of the original, straight-from-camera files and perform processing options on copies.

Infact I usually have a number of versions - my original RAW file, a TIFF file which I have created by converting the RAW and performing all my post processing on it, a JPEG version (at full size) for sending to printers (I create the jpeg from the TIFF once all post processing is done so the JPEG doesn't have to be saved more than once) and then one more version, a low resolution JPEG for display on the web.

I'd be happy to look at your files, though it's impossible to really judge anything on a tiny, web version. If you'd like to email me some versions to look at please do but I probably won't be able to take a look till I get back. Oh wait, don't send them to my hotmail, email me at hotmail and I'll reply with my other email address that can accept bigger files.

Kavey

Hey Sherry, I'm back from Wales!
Did that help at all or make it worse? Any more questions? Just ping!