Digital photos

[ronbarn]

Are any of you editors having success with using photos taken with a digital camera in your newsletter? If so what are your tricks?<P>Is it the quality of the camera?<BR>What about the photo software?<BR>What about format, i.e. GIFF, TIFF, JPEG, etc.?<BR>Any special directions for the printer?

[soxfan]

We were told by our printer that he wouldn't get good reprint quality unless the scans or digital photos were 1200x1200 dpi.<P>Unfortunately, our scanner only does 600x1200, so we have to pay for the printer to do the scan. We're looking into the cost of one of the commercial scanners to see if that will reduce costs in the long run.<P>Also, your pictures are only as good as your output. You can scan at high quality, but if your printer can't handle it...<p>[This message has been edited by soxfan (edited 04-04-2001).]

[jac]

I use a Sony Mavica MVC-FD81 Digital(low to medium price) camera and a 35mm (Cannon EOS-A2e) for the Richey Region newsletter with almost equal results. The 35mm certainly gives the photographer more freedom unless you have a very expensive Digital No matter which I use, once the photo is in the computer I use Photoshop 5.5<BR>to level, color balance, crop,contrast ...etc. the photo. There are cheaper software in the $90 that will do a very good job of correction.<BR> I always store the photos in jpeg. I print the newsletter on a HP 4500 color laser printer. The quality of the paper used to print is just as important for quality photos as the camera, scanner, and printer. <BR> As to the quality of the camera, I am not certain that it has as big of an impact that one might think at first glance. I have just ordered a Cannon D30, so I will be able to better answer that question in a month or so.<BR>There is no question that with better and interchangable lenses that the photographer has more freedom in taking the picture however, some of the problems can be overcome with a software.

[John N. Packard]

Ron,<BR> I have an H-P Photosmart, inexpensive digital camera. I am not satisfied with the quality even at the highest resolution which is four pictures on the chip. I normally store 16. It works well on the web but not in the printed newsletter.<BR> I have a Nikon N70 that I got from my son-in-law and have begun to use it and have the photos downloaded digitally as well as in print form. That seems to work better for me. I use JPEG format. I have Photoshop software; but have not installed it yet.<P>jnp

[novaman]

I'm not the newsletter editor but,am the one doing the web pages for Alamance Chapter and NC region. In dealing with ditgal photos I found that the jpeg files are the easiest to work with. Don't have as much conflict going between computer due to programming. <P>A regular photo (35mm) is 720dpi quality. There are several low cost printers that are 1200x1200. Lexmark is one brand, which i use and am happy with. Now to make the photos faster on the internet, change the resulotion to 72dpi and make the photo half size really speeds them up.<P>I have had the oppertunity to use a Sony digital camera (it was the $400-$500 model that uses 3.5" floppies) I liked it. I got about 4 photo per floppy. yea, you need to carry a bunch with you but that bets paying $50 approx. for one of those little cards when if you watch Office Max ads you can get the 3.5" for free (after rebate). I hope to get one of these.

[Guest boettger]

I've been playing with the Sony Mavica for a few months. Not really happy with photos in my newsletter, mostly due to the photocopy machines that I use for free at a local copier sales place. I've been enhancing my digital photos in Photoshop. I change them to monochrome then lighten them way more than one would think is necessary. Then I apply a halftone screen filter. Like I say I'm not totally satisfied yet, but will keep experimenting. My biggest problem is that when I show up to make the copies, Inever know what machine I will be using. But, beggars cant be too choosey. The results are not always as I want, but the generosity of the member that owns the business saves our club over $100 per month in copying costs.<P>------------------<BR>Steve Boettger<BR>'30 DeSoto 8<BR>'59 Nash Metropolitan<BR>'23 Chevrolet Touring<BR>Iroquois Region, AACA Web Site<BR>http://www.aaca.org/iroquois/

[fordee9r (Ron Springstead)]

When shopping for a digital camera, I was told to get at least 1 megapixel and OPTICAL zoom instead of DIGITAL zoom. Most cameras with those features were out of my price range. I learned that "www.overstock.com" handles discontinued and factory serviced items. Here I bought my Kodak DC120, a discontinued model that sold for $600, for $240.<BR> I was not happy with my first pictures because I had to shoot at a low quality level to get more than 4 shots. After buying a memory card on e-Bay, I could shoot at the best quality level and still get over 50 photos. I was very happy with these and used them in my newsletter with very little retouching.<BR> I use the software that came with my Canon printer to retouch pictures. It's simple and adjusts brightness, contrast, intensity and focus. If you need to do more than that, trash the picture and work with another. My newsletter is printed on whatever copy paper BJ's or Sam's Club has for the best price. Each page of every copy is printed on a Canon BJC-6000 bubblejet printer and I haven't seen the need to use their optional (expensive) "photo" ink cartridge. It may make a difference on glossy paper but, on regular paper, the regular ink tanks work just fine.<BR> Hope this info helps. If you want to see samples, let me know and I'll mail you some.<P>Ron Springstead, Editor<BR>"The Schoharie Valley Rambler"<BR><P>------------------<BR>

[fordee9r (Ron Springstead)]

Hey Ron,<P>I just put out the April issue of the "Rambler" with several photos taken with my digital camera. I was very happy with the printed results so I am either doing something right or my eyes are going bad.<P>Have you made any progress with your digital camera dilemma?<BR><P>------------------<BR>Ron Springstead, Editor<BR><I>The Schoharie Valley Rambler</I>

[ronbarn]

Am getting some good photos, but have not yet had to transfer them to the newsletter in black and white. Am still working on it. Thanx for the comments so far.

[Guest]

Hi, I'm the editor of the Roamin' Angels Newsletter in No. Calif. (they're members of your org.) and deal with photos on a regular basis... scanned from photos as well as emailed pics from members. The best success I have is with photos that I scan myself. (best control) I use Photoshop, a UMAX 1200 scanner and scan the pics in color and convert to grayscale.(better definition) A suggestion, increase the contrast. This makes the pics sharper. The best gauge is to try a couple of different things in photoshop (ie. changing the "levels" and contrast and brightnes) and have your printer/ printshop run some "proofs" for you so you can see what actually works. Sometimes a lighter photo works better than one that looks "perfect" on your original. On the digital pics, the best jpgs/tifs are at least 150 dpi if you're printing the newsletter on a xerox type machine. 72 dpi are bad news unless you're using it for a website. No matter what I've done, I can't "clean up" a jpg or gif that's only 72 dpi. (FYI- xerox prints at about 85 lpi so approx. double that gives you the approx. best resolution to "save" the pic at- that being 150 dpi. By the same token... press printing is 106 lpi so the best photos are 200 dpi tho 150 will still work ok.) Another thing is that once you get a jpg, you really shouldn't alter it... changes the integrity of the pic. Found this out the hard way! I too am still struggling with this picture dilemna. It all boils down to the picture resolution and the printer/ printshop printing quality. Unfortunately, I don't know much about digital cameras... the other messages were interesting and helpful on that subject. Thanks.<BR>As a side note... does anyone know where I can find some classic car related crossword puzzles?<BR>dblakley@foothill.net

[John N. Packard]

Diane,<BR> Your discussion of picture quality is the first one that has made sense to me! Basically, we need to double the resolution of the photo compared to the print quality of the medium that we are using. I got Photoshop from my son-in-law for Christmas and have just installed it. I think I see improvement. I was using Microsoft Picture It and some Kodak software. Thanks for your comments!<P>jnp

[Guest]

I'm in the middle of converting a bunch of webpages into print articles. The quality of the photos for the web are simply unacceptable for print. I've found 600 dpi is good enough on an inkjet printer. Since most of the photos were originally scanned at 150 or 300 dpi, they have all needed to be rescanned. Needless to say I am very thankful I took the original photos on 35mm! If I had used a digital camera four years ago, I probably would not have been able to recover the pics to modern presentable standards. This is why I always use 35mm for originals.<P>As a general rule of thumb, when you've turned up the brightness to the point that it looks too bright on the screen, that's about when it'll print good. Typically I find notching up contrast 30-50% of whatever I notched up brightness will help make the image crisper.<P>Cheers,<BR>Bry

[Mark DeFloria]

Hi Ron:<P>I use digital photos on our web pages (relatively low resolution to speed up load time). The web seems to be very forgiving. However, for our Western PA Region, Round-Up I like to use scanned 35 mm photos. I like to work with jpg files of maximum resolution. Unfortunately, I sometime end up with 2 meg files. I have been using a Kodak DC-4800 digital camera for work purposes with good first generation results. I think it will produce ok re-printable results, though I have not used it for our newsletter yet. It is a 3.1 megapixel camera. It can be found "on-sale" for around $450.00 (Sam's Club). Of course that?s $200 less than paid a month or so ago. I hope to use it for some antique car photos later this month. I'll let you know of the results.<P>Mark DeFloria<P>

[Guest BruceW]

Don't know if you are interested... but for color webpage images, I use an image optimizer from Spinwave. <P>I use the jpg and gif Crunchers they have online. (You can purchase a full fledge optimizer package from the company but I find the free online services suits me fine. The main difference is the full fledge version lets you optimize batches of pictures instead of one at a time).<P>Both jpg and gif crunchers are available that optimize the image file size to smaller files (not image size which remains the same) without affecting the quality of the picture. This allows for faster image loading on the website.<P>I have reduced a lot of my images up to and over 60% in file size. A series of the image are outputed to the screen that are in different scales of compression (eg 10%, 25%, 35%, 50%, 60%) I have reduced a 50k image file to 30k or less with minimal or no affect in the image quality. In tests, I could not see differences between the original and the image "crunched" up to 60% in size for most of the images. <P>I use the jpg cruncher on my Model A Ford website and always get comments about how great the pictures look.<P>The URL for spinwave is <A HREF="http://www.digfrontiers.com/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.digfrontiers.com/</A> <P>then click on Image Crunchers....<P>Just an idea I thought I'd pass along.<p>[This message has been edited by BruceW (edited 04-10-2001).]

[Guest]

what happened to my registration

[Guest BruceW]

pre16,<P>I lost my identity too at first.<BR>Peter told me to check to see if cookies were disbabled. You need to accept cookies to keep your login.

[Jim Bollman]

I'm not the editor of our regional newsletter but I do one for our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate. I have done their newsletter completely digital for many years and have switched to a digital camera for most of the photos the last 18 months. I use an Olympus 450Z, the equivalent today is the 460Z. It is 1.3Mpixel with 3X zoom. If you want a little room for cropping I would not go any lower in resolution. I have taken over 1400 pictures with mine and have been very happy.<P>A lot of good advice has already been given so I will not rehash it all but here are a few points.<P>Jpeg is not a problem just don't push the compression to hard and you can open and modify many times with out a problem. I usually stay at a quality factor of 8 or 9 on a 10 scale. This gives you a file roughly 10-20% of the original.<P>Novaman don't jump on those floppy based cameras to fast you will get tired of carrying all those disks around. I just bought a new $50 memory card for mine that will hold a 150 images at the best quality mode, that is a lot of floppies and I don't have to juggle changing media when conditions are not the best. My old card holds 75 images so with the two I'm good for most trips without downloading to my laptop and the second card fits in a matchbook size case.<P>I'm a Mac person and use GraphicsConverter for most of my work, an excellent $35 shareware program. I also have PhotoShop and Debablizer. If I could only have one it would be GC. I have worked in digital imaging for many years so I collect software that helps me do my work. <P>Don't be afraid to add a little sharpening to give the image some snap in your newsletter, look for unsharp masking (really a special shapening method) for one of the best. A little to much sharpening on the screen usually looks best in print.<P>The print shops are right your results will not be as good as their 1200X1200 scanner, but most people will not be able to tell the difference. I have printed out on photopaper 480X640 pixel images at 4X6 inches and not 1 in 10 people identify it as even a digital image and that 1 person will still think it is ok. Now I'm not talking inkjet but real photo printing you will need a bit more than that for 4X6 on inkjet or offset if you don't want them to tell it is digital but it will still be pretty good in a newsletter. I usually try for around 600-800 pixels across a normal 1 column picture in the newsletter.<P>I create a print ready file on my Mac and write a PostScript file to use on the printer. Many of the quick print shops can print your PostScript files directly. The fies will tend to be bigger than what will fit on a floppy if you add pictures. I have a zip drive. Check with your printer. CDRs are cheap enough now you could burn a CD for less than 50 cents.<P>Later<P>Jim...

[Guest]

I am the newsletter editor for Charleston Chatter, publication for Charleston-Lowcountry Region AACA. I have been using a Olympus Camedia Digital Camera D-360L to take club pictures. The disk in this camera holds approx. 45 pictures. The disk from the camera is put into a 3.5 floppy to transfer to the computer. I use Photoshop to get these on my hard drive. After doing touch up such as contrast etc. I change the size to 3 X 5 then change to black and white (there is a name for that on photoshop but I can't think of it now) When I put a photo into our news letter I will print the page the photo is on - on photo paper. Makes the finished product come out great. I have a Epson stylus color 740 ink jet printer, the pictures come out great and the finished newsletter also.

[ronbarn]

I really appreciate this input. Since I was last on this thread I put out my first newsletter for The Marmon Club. Am using Photoshop and QuarXPress on a Mac. Still learning but results were remarkably good considering what I had to work with - Xerox copies of 60 year old photos and limited personal skills.<P>Some of the comments would have made no sense at the time I started this thread, but now, with a little experience, are very informative. <P>Now I have a new problem. I got permission to reprint an article, with photos from a magazine. Am trying to get the original photos but it is unlikely that they will be available in time. The scan of the magazine photos have wierd patterns due to the printing process. Is there some way to clean up those scans?

[ply33]

Ron,<P>The scanner software that came with my wife's relatively high end Agfa scanner has a option for "de-screening" a photograph as it is scanned. (Screening is the process of turning a continous tone photo into a grid of various size dots for printing.)<P>It seems to work pretty well on the magazine (100 line screen) pictures I have done.<P>So check your scanner software for some option that sounds like that.

[jac]

Ron,<BR> AAh, the old Moire pattern, well there is good news and bad news. Tod is correct, most scanners purchased in the last year or so have a "descreening" function. The good news is that you have Photoshop which has some way of dealing with the problem. The bad news is it is not step by step process. Some times one way works and next time you have to get a bigger hammer. I will list a couple of things you can try and if you are going to Hickery Corners MI I will give you a write-up on solving the problem. 1. When you scan use a much higher resolution than you need, then in photoshop reduce the resolution to your requirements. 2. Another way that works sometimes is to use the Despeckle filter in Photoshop or the dust and scratches filter. 3. Some time the gaussian Blur works when all else has failed.Just go easy with the Blur for you can loose some of the details.<BR> If you are not going to MI I will snail mail you a copy ot the article on Moire patterns.<BR>later-jac

[ronbarn]

Tod & jac, Your inputs took in the right direction and I learned a lot more about the scanner and Photoshop. Just produced six great photos from a Marmon article. I remember Moire patterns from optical courses in college (about a million years ago) but had no idea that there was descreening software in my scanner. With this new info, my confidence level is definitely improving. Thanx!! <P>jac, I will not be in MI but would welcome the snail mail article. The way this is going, I think I'm really going to have fun with this newsletter. Ron

[ply33]

Glad to have been a help.

[jac]

Ron,<BR> The snail picked up the article today so it it on the way.<BR> Yes, it can be fun, but also frustrating, tiring, and the monthly deadline seems to come around twice a month. However, it is well worth it though when someone come up to you and says "that was a great issue that you just published".<BR>later-jac

[jac]

Ron,<BR> The snail picked up the article today so it it on the way.<BR> Yes, it can be fun, but also frustrating, tiring, and the monthly deadline seems to come around twice a month. However, it is well worth it though when someone come up to you and says "that was a great issue that you just published".<BR>later-jac