All Naturally Lit Outdoor Portrait

Tally Ho · Jul 9, 2005

My first posting of an image here on this site. This was done in my outdoor studio using all natural light. No reflectors or flash used in the creation of this portrait, but I did Photoshop out the unusual looking catchlights in her eyes and placed round ones in. Original on Kodak Portra 160 NC film then converted to digital by my lab.

Tally Ho

Jeff Canes · Jul 9, 2005

[font=&quot]Nice shot, IMO its seem a little soft and grainy, where you going for a soft look, what MPs were the scans, that could be the source the grain IMO[/font]

Tally Ho · Jul 12, 2005

The original file was a 25 meg scan. Here is how I make them small enough to be able to upload them. Maybe I'm doing something wrong that makes them fuzzy, because the original is tack razor sharp. In Photoshop I crop the image down from an 8 x 10 down to a 2 x 2.5 then I reduce the pixel dimension to 72 (from 300 or more) then I go to 'Save For Web' and if the file is bigger than 340 kb I reduce it again by lowering the size in the 'Quality' slide scale until it is smaller than 340. How should I be doing it?

Benji

JEFFB · Jul 12, 2005

I think you may find it better to just resize (Image/Image Size) the image in photoshop, to whatever size you want, ie 640 x whatever the aspect ratio allows. (just leaving width linked to height) I used to use image resize, a powertool for winXP pro, but it removes pixels, and reduces quality. which I think is similar to what you are doing. When I resize it in photoshop, I haven't had any problems posting. (However, I haven't been watching file size because I host them from my own pc.)

ps: I'm no expert, so perhaps there is a better way, and feel free to correct anything I may have wrong, this is just what works for me.

ETA: I just checked and when I used the image resier it leaves me with a file size around 26k, but if I change the image size in PS it ends up around 250 - 300k. Which should mean only small adjustments on that slider when you save as Jpeg.

thebeginning · Jul 12, 2005

what i do for reducing files is change the pixel size instead of the inch size, but it doesnt really matter, your photos' sizes are fine. My suggestion is to not change ppi from 300 to 72. change it to like 230, but not alot lower. the file shouldnt be that huge, so it shouldnt take too many slider changes to get under 340kb. dont go under 10 for quality though, you'll end up losing some quality. also, when you resize, you might consider doing some slight sharpening since you lose some detail when you resize.

JonMikal · Jul 12, 2005

i reduce images to a minimum size of 700 pixels and post. the file is a bit large, but it holds it's original properties for optimized viewing. 56K users hate it though. if you want to speed viewing, just save that 700 pixel image using the 'save for web' option. it significantly reduces the file size and reduces quality (down to 72), but probably not enuf to really matter. hope this helps.