Digital Imaging Utah State University Extension Eric Hawley

Digital Imaging Utah State University Extension Eric Hawley

“Agenda” • • • Digital Camera features, terms, and technologies Transferring images from camera to computer “Developing” digital images: – Understanding resolution and image size (How do you get a 5 x 7 image? ) • Editing, transforming, and processing images • Understanding and working with different image file • formats How to adjust an image for different applications (such as web, e-mail, archival and print) – Editing “blemishes” – Adjusting color balance, contrast, brightness, etc. – Batch tools – making similar changes to a large group of photos (Using Photoshop and Photoshop Elements)

Things that Don’t Go Away • There always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~Ansel Adams • No photographer is as good as the simplest camera. ~Edward Steichen • I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. ~John Steinbeck • Buying a Nikon doesn't make you a photographer. It makes you a Nikon owner. ~Author Unknown

“Post Photographic” Skills • Getting files off of the camera or scanner • Archiving • Choosing and adjusting image file type • Editing • Scaling size/resolution for web/e-mail • Scaling size/resolution for print

Terms and Concepts • Pixels • Image Resolution • “Output” or “Physical” Image Size • Color Depth • File Formats

To the drawing board…

Back from the drawing board… File Formats

“Web Friendly” File Formats • JPEG images (*. jpg, *. jpe, *. jfif) - many compression levels (lossy) • Compu. Serve images (*. gif) - compression format: LZW (lossless) - special: interlaced, non-interlaced • Portable network graphic images (*. png) - compression format: LZ 77

JPEG/JPG “Photographical” • JPEG is designed for compressing either full-color or grey-scale digital images of "natural", real-world scenes. It does not work so well on non-realistic images, such as cartoons or line drawings. • Remember, the 'P' in JPEG stands for 'Photographic'. It was designed to be used to compress photographic image data. (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

GIF “Solid colors and lines” • GIF images can contain a maximum of 256 colors (8 bits) or less… (Graphics Interchange Format) …if you create a GIF image of a red arrow, you can customize the file to have only two colors, red and white.

PNG • PNG: Essentially ‘Extended’ GIF Images. Allows for up to 24 -bit color including control of opacity. Saving, restoring and re -saving a PNG image will not degrade its quality. PNG does not support animation like GIF does. “Patent-Free”

“Edit Friendly” • Uncompressed or lossless compression – Saved, edited, saved, edited without penalty – Good for archives… (Why? )

“Edit Friendly” (web poor) file formats (Either uncompressed or lossless compression) • TIFF images (*. tif, *. tiff) • • • - uncompressed (Compressed: packed bits, LZW*, CCITT T. 4, Deflate, new style JPEG…) Standard Windows bitmap images (*. bmp) - uncompressed Photoshop images (*. psd, *. pdd) - uncompressed RAW images (*. raw) - shockingly uncompressed

Four Steps to “Preparing” Digital Photos

Step A. • Archive “important” photos in their BIRTHDAY SUITS. (native, un-edited, unresaved, happy, naked state) • (Meaning, make a copy and DON’T work on the copy…)

Step B • If you will be doing lots of saving, editing, saving, editing… FIRST, convert to a lossless or un-compressed form.

Step C • Edit and Adjust – For appropriate pixel size – Cropping, color, orientation – Any other editing

Step D. • Save in the desired production format… Done!

On to software… • Picasa 2 • Windows XP – Filing System, Picture Details, Viewing… • Irfanview • Photoshop Elements or CS