Saving pictures

lucki85 · Mar 11, 2008

Okay another question from me

I have had my camera for about a year and I believe I shoot in RAW (sad, I know...It seems like I would know by now..) Anyway, when I download my pics to my comp I apparently save the as HUGE files. Normally when I try to e-mail them to people I can send like a max of 2 at a time. Anyway, How do I save them? Do I really need to save them as such a huge size? I do print a lot of 8x10's and occasionally 11x13 but as of now, nothing larger...if that makes a difference. Also..any good books you can recommend on photography in general. I picked up a few from the library yesterday....Digital photography by steve bavister, Digital portrait photography 101 by Bill Hurter (pretty lame if you ask me), mastering digital slr photography ( not sure who wrote it), ans Skin by lee Varis. The Digital photography one was pretty good, but just pretty much the basics of SS and AP. Anything else you'd like to add?

Big Mike · Mar 11, 2008

You need to understand and work out your workflow.

I shoot in RAW, I save the RAW files in a folder. I process the ones that I want and then save/export those as TIFF or JPEG files. Then I edit those files in Photoshop and save them.
Then if I want to print, I will resize it to the print size I want and save a copy. If I want to upload to the web or E-mail them, I resize them and compress them (save as JPEG with lower quality setting)...then save a copy.

So when it's all said and done, I might have 4 or 5 separate copies of an image. The important thing is that you don't save over your original files with a lower quality files. Always save a new file as a copy.

Socrates · Mar 11, 2008

lucki85 said:
Okay another question from me I have had my camera for about a year and I believe I shoot in RAW (sad, I know...It seems like I would know by now..) Anyway, when I download my pics to my comp I apparently save the as HUGE files. Normally when I try to e-mail them to people I can send like a max of 2 at a time. Anyway, How do I save them? Do I really need to save them as such a huge size? I do print a lot of 8x10's and occasionally 11x13 but as of now, nothing larger...if that makes a difference. Also..any good books you can recommend on photography in general. I picked up a few from the library yesterday....Digital photography by steve bavister, Digital portrait photography 101 by Bill Hurter (pretty lame if you ask me), mastering digital slr photography ( not sure who wrote it), ans Skin by lee Varis. The Digital photography one was pretty good, but just pretty much the basics of SS and AP. Anything else you'd like to add?

Email can cause all kinds of problems with large files because of mailbox sizes. The worst part is that you might know the size of your mailbox but it's unlikely that you know the size of the recipient mailboxes. Be aware that there is an outgoing box and an incoming box. When you email to a friend, you're limited by the smaller of your outgoing box and his incoming box. Also, incoming boxes typically have a maximum size per message and a maximum size for all unretrieved messages. Adding insult to injury, it's entirely possible that your files might bring the recipient's mailbox to just under its capacity and, until he retrieves your messages, all other incoming messages get rejected!

I rent space on a server (dot-Mac). Instead of emailing large files, I upload them and send a text message telling the recipients how to download from the server.

lucki85 · Mar 11, 2008

Yikes, I forgot that my large files can make it so others incomings can be rejected....I might have some ticked off people at me

So What I am gathering, is that I do need to save and keep the large files, but resize for e-mail or whatever else I am doing. In one of the books I checked out, it said something like saving as 72/75 dpi for websites or emails.....does this make sense? Sometimes I read things, but it takes a human being to actually explain it to me

Thanks!

gsga · Mar 11, 2008

i use photoshop, but i guess there are other free/freeware programs that will let you crop, basic edit, change size.

if you want to at some point print your images, do what big mike says and save all the orig raw (or whatever) files. save to an ext hd for archival purposes and get em off your hd. and then make dvd backups if you never want to lose them. IE backup, backup, backup.

then you can just have an "upload" filefolder on your hd that you save all your Low Res photos too...

72ppi (pixels per inch) is what's called Screen Resolution. anything over this is overkill at 100% viewing. so that means you want to reduce the size of your raw file to how you want it viewed by your recipiant. usually 600-800 pixels wide at 72ppi is adequate for just emailing around.

pshop is good for the "save to web" feature that will let you preview your sized jpg at different viewing resolutions 100%, 90%, 80% etc.

i'd export to .jpg for web/email. save .tif files for print.

lucki85 · Mar 11, 2008

gsga said:
i use photoshop, but i guess there are other free/freeware programs that will let you crop, basic edit, change size.

if you want to at some point print your images, do what big mike says and save all the orig raw (or whatever) files. save to an ext hd for archival purposes and get em off your hd. and then make dvd backups if you never want to lose them. IE backup, backup, backup.

then you can just have an "upload" filefolder on your hd that you save all your Low Res photos too...

72ppi (pixels per inch) is what's called Screen Resolution. anything over this is overkill at 100% viewing. so that means you want to reduce the size of your raw file to how you want it viewed by your recipiant. usually 600-800 pixels wide at 72ppi is adequate for just emailing around.

pshop is good for the "save to web" feature that will let you preview your sized jpg at different viewing resolutions 100%, 90%, 80% etc.

i'd export to .jpg for web/email. save .tif files for print.

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Thanks, I do have Photoshop and all of my pictures are downloaded onto there. I just bought a new computer and have been afraid to download anything onto it :er: All of my pictures are on my other computer and sitting on my memory card..Anyway, I was thinking about getting an ext HD so I wouldn't have to worry about it. So...(bare with me...) I save pictures onto Dvd's not Cd's?

lucki85 · Mar 11, 2008

gsga said:
i'd export to .jpg for web/email. save .tif files for print.

Yeah, I was just reading about this...tif keeps the pictures at full resolution (?) and jpeg slightly reduces it and I guess it sounds like Gif is crap.

Big Mike · Mar 11, 2008

Saving in different formats doesn't necessarily affect the 'resolution'.

Jpeg is a compression format, so it compresses the file and you loose some image quality...but the size of the image will remain the same (unless you change that too).

TIFF is a lossless format, so you can save all you want, without losing quality....but the files are much larger.

To make things easy for yourself. Try the 'Save for Web' tool in Photoshop. It can both reduce the size of the image and allow you to compress the image (JPEG) quality.

Socrates · Mar 11, 2008

lucki85 said:
Yikes, I forgot that my large files can make it so others incomings can be rejected....I might have some ticked off people at me So What I am gathering, is that I do need to save and keep the large files, but resize for e-mail or whatever else I am doing. In one of the books I checked out, it said something like saving as 72/75 dpi for websites or emails.....does this make sense? Sometimes I read things, but it takes a human being to actually explain it to me Thanks!

Yes, that makes sense. Be aware, however, that saving like that allows a picture to look good on a computer screen but it will print terrible.

gsga · Mar 11, 2008

yeah what soc and mike said. jpg for web, tif for print. in general...

---jpegs are "lossy", meaning everytime you open a jpg on your screen and look at it... you lose a small amout of information... 1s and 0s. so if you're working in photoshop and want to print high resolution pics, you'd use tifs as the export/saving choice because all the info in that pic (the pixels) won't ever be lost with use.

---so the rule of thumb is keep tif files at a minimum of 300dpi (ink dots per inch) at the size you want it printed at. be that 5" wide, etc... that's called print resolution. there are reasons to work with higher dpi, such as zooming in on a section and cropping to print from that, but that's another ball of wax.

---and jpgs should be 72ppi (pixels per inch, same thing. just talking pixels on a screen instead of dots of ink on a print) at the size you want people to view it at... say 400 pixels wide, by whatever.

if you stick to these rules, you'll notice that if you printed a 72ppi jpeg... it will look horrible at 5" wide on a sheet of paper. because there's only 72 dots representing that area of your image, instead of 300 in that same inch. that's why you Export/Save a web version and keep an original high res print version.

gsga · Mar 11, 2008

oh and the dvd thing... just said that because you can save data to dvdrs (as well as cdrs too). but you can just fit a whole lot more pics on a dvd

i'm just assuming you have a dual dvdr/cdr burner built into your pc... because most new computers do. cdrs work fine too.

yeah you're right. gif is usually used for web graphics and can have only 256 colors... so you can see that it wouldn't be good for print, being that the eye can perceive millions of colors.

Big Mike · Mar 11, 2008

---jpegs are "lossy", meaning everytime you open a jpg on your screen and look at it...

It's only when saving a JPEG that you loose information...not when you open it.

And jus to clairfy...DPI (dots per inch) is a printer setting and has little to do with a digital file. PPI is a setting for how it's displayed on a monitor.

The PPI setting is used as a reference to know how big of a print you can make. 300 is the usual standard...so for every 300 pixels, you get an inch of print size.

Really, the thing that matters most is the size of the image, in pixels. Lets say your image is 2400x3000 pixels. That's enough for an 8x10" print at 300 pixels per inch. However, you can change the PPI value in photoshop to 25 or 10,000...and as long as it remains at 2400x3000...it won't change the image at all (just how it's displayed on the screen).

Socrates · Mar 11, 2008

gsga said:
yeah what soc and mike said. jpg for web, tif for print. in general...

---jpegs are "lossy", meaning everytime you open a jpg on your screen and look at it... you lose a small amout of information...

Not 100% accurate. You lose a small amount of information every time that you save (resave) the document. Merely opening it has no effect. Also, the amount of information lost during a save/resave is really tiny. It takes many many saves before human beings can detect the difference.

gsga · Mar 11, 2008

i stand corrected! i thought it was so... was trying to phrase it in a way that was easy for him to understand being that he's never worked with these formats.

gsga · Mar 11, 2008

now if people are printing from "raw" files... are these normally rgb or cmyk? or do you have the choice to save it as either colorspace when you're dl-ing from your cam...