2c. Digital Image Editing

Here are the materials and methods that I used for image editing.

1. Photo prints (4x6 inch) from the filmcams were scanned (300 dpi, TIFF format) to produce adequate quality images for use on the web.

2. Image files from the Stylus 300 digicam are in JPEG format. These must be first saved in a lossless format (e.g. TIFF) before editing and resaving in JPEG format for use on the web.

3. Even though film developing is faster now than it was in the past, it is pretty awesome to come home, download the digital images from the camera and immediately view them on the computer.

4. I have severely reduced the size and resolution of the images to optimize them for rapid downloads over the Internet. Maybe on a photography-related site like this one the users will accept slower downloads in exchange for nicer images. What do you think?

     a) Depending on your monitor and screen settings most computers can display only about 72 dpi image resolution, so the viewer gets no advantage from higher resolution pictures on websites. Higher resolution pictures just take longer to download.

     b) I have used the sharpen filter in the Photoshop Elements software to help make these low resolution images look a little better.

     c) I could have linked the small images to full-sized pictures on the website. This would have enabled interested viewers to click on a small picture to download and view the big picture. This would also take a lot of server space and bandwidth, so anybody who wants to see my big pictures will just have to contact me to make other arrangements.