Emailing Photos

Story By: 

Don and Bonnie Fink

The Parallel of Film and Digital Photography -There are several things that computers and the internet are really good for, and it's surprising, but many of these things are notoriously difficult for the casual user. The first, and probably most problematic issue that comes to mind is dealing with digital pictures in general, and sending digital pictures in particular over the internet.

The subject of this article is “Emailing Photographs,” but we're actually going to cover a few more issues, all of which are slanted at getting pictures from your camera and into the hands of those you want to share them with.

Not long ago, keeping track of the whereabouts of your pictures was easy. You put film in your camera, and when you were done, you took the film out and had it processed. There was a clear physical trail in terms of where your pictures were.

With digital cameras, the process is similar if you perform at the same functional level. Some of the terminology is different. For example, where you used to buy film balanced for a particular light source, you now adjust your white balance on the camera. Clearly the capabilities have been significantly expanded if you choose to use them. In the end, you still have a camera, and it does basically what the film cameras did, which is capture an image. You have a different and more capable kind of “film” in that you use memory cards. Actually, memory cards are getting cheap enough that you could probably treat them exactly as film by putting in a new one each time a memory card was filled, but there's really no need.

Where the confusion seems to start is when a person finishes taking a series of pictures and needs to have them “processed”. In the film days, you simply took the film down to a processor and turned them over. Today, you can still do that exact same thing if you choose. You can take your memory card to a friendly neighborhood Walmart, Costco, or any number of places that do consumer processing, and they will print images from your card, and in many cases make you a CD of your images, which serves as your negative.

This process closely resembles the steps in the “film” days, and is not much more confusing. Actually, in many ways it's exactly the same as in the “film days”. Where people start to lose their grasp in the whole process is when they start to integrate some of the additional capabilities that goes along with digital imaging. Instead of taking their memory cards down to the local processor, they start making their own CDs and DVDs. They use software that makes corrections and improvements to the pictures. This is not unique to the film world, but it starts to closely resemble the actions of a darkroom, which is beyond the interest and capabilities of most casual shooters.

We're not suggesting that you refrain from using software and computers to fix up your pictures, but we are suggesting that this is where people start to get a little confused if they don't think the process through completely.

Adding Capabilities – So far, all we've talked about is how to duplicate the process of using a film camera. It seems to be a bit of a shame, however, not to take advantage of the tremendous increase in capability with the digital medium.

Nearly all digital cameras, and especially consumer point and shoot cameras, come with photo organizing and editing software. While it's absolutely out of the question to make even a feeble attempt to cover this software in a small magazine article, it's important to encourage even the most casual photographer to learn about the software that came with their camera. One of the great advantages of digital cameras is that you can practice, and not spend any money on film processing. If you don't want to keep your pictures, simply delete them. Some cameras even come with “docking stations”, where the camera can be more or less automatically linked to your computer, and the pictures more or less automatically downloaded.

Not many years ago, this software was not as successful as we would have hoped, but today the process is much more reliable, and the average consumer is able to install and operate the docking cradles and associated software with a reasonable degree of success.

Once you become familiar with the capabilities of the software that came with your camera, you have at your disposal a wealth of tools that can make your pictures better. For the most part, however, you'll want to focus on getting really good with the basic steps of cropping and correcting the exposure. Those two functions alone can account for 80% of all the corrections that are typically needed to a good quality photograph.

So what kind of quality do you really need to make a good photograph? First of all, let's define a “good photograph”. For the purpose of this discussion, we are considering a good photograph to be a printed picture that's 8.5 x 11 inches, or smaller, which should cover most consumer snapshots.

A reasonably good picture, when printed on a page is generally acceptable when printed to a density of 200 dots per inch (dpi). When you do the math, you quickly discover that a picture that's printed at 200 dpi at a physical size of 8.5 x 11 inches will use 3,740,000 dots. If you consider that one dot can be represented by one byte of data in a file, it's not a stretch to see that a 4 mega-pixel (MP) camera can easily shoot a picture that will make a photograph of the sizes we're discussing here. While the purists in the group can point out that this information is not exactly correct, it seems to work in practice.

Most consumer cameras in production produce images that are far in excess of 4MP these days. It's common to have a camera that's in the 10MP range, and it should be comforting to know that these cameras are very capable of producing very good photographs. When considering the purchase of a new camera, it might be helpful to concentrate on other features, like optical zoom capabilities or the quality of the lens system, and not so much on the number of mega-pixels that a camera can capture.

Emailing Your Pictures – It's unfortunate, but even in today's world of high speed internet connections, sending more than just a few pictures at full resolution can take its toll on a modest connection. Assuming that you have a DSL line that downloads at 130 kilobits per second (kp/s), it's easy to see that downloading five pictures at 6 MP each can easily take several minutes.

If you're uploading pictures to a printer like Costco for printing, there's not much you can do about it. You need to send pictures that have enough information to make a good quality print, but there's no reason to put your friends and relatives through the same ordeal when you don't need to. While the large printing companies have fast connections specifically for this reason, it's likely that at least some of your personal acquaintances will download at slower speeds.

To send pictures that are intended for viewing on a computer screen, you should consider preparing the picture so it makes for a painless operation on the receiving end. Some software programs have provisions for doing this in a non-technical way, and some don't. Basically, what you're trying to do when you prepare a photograph for emailing is a two or three step process.

In our workflow, we use Photoshop, and here's our process - First, we resize an image to the correct physical size for sending. For most emailing purposes, this is about 5 x 7 inches. Next, we resize the density of the image, which means that we take the image from 300 dpi down to 72 dpi, the reasoning being that computer monitors can't resolve more than that anyway. One point is important to grasp here. There is no correlation to the picture's size and its density, or dots per inch. A 5 x 7 print is a 5 x 7 print, regardless of whether it's at 72 dpi or 300. The dots per inch speak to the resolution, or the detail of a photograph, not its size. Finally, we manipulate the compression of the file, which means that Photoshop runs various algorithms in the JPEG compression and displays an image at that compression for us to preview. We then pick the maximum compression with the least loss of image quality.

Pay Attention To This – In every article of this kind, there should be at least one piece of advice that will help people do things better. While we talk about using your existing software that came with your camera, or mention that we use a high end product like Photoshop, these processes may simply not work out for some people. If you fall into the general category of folks who still have trouble, here's what you do:

Go to Google, and download their free software called Picasa. This package will organize your photos (meaning it helps you locate your pictures on your computer), edit your photos, print, email, send to your choice of 13 different outside printers, including Wal-Mart and Walgreens, and make a self running CD.

Recently, we took a picture straight out of the camera, which was about 10 MP in size. We made one click to email that picture, and Picasa automatically resized the picture to about a 5x7 inch image, and reduced its density to about 72dpi. The total file size for emailing was 68k; more than acceptable for emailing purposes. The complete process of our workflow was reduced to one click!

Often, when a picture is referred to in terms of large or small the speaker is actually referring to the physical size of the file. The Kilo-bytes or Mega-bytes that make up the file that is the picture. People often mistakenly think that a large picture in terms file size indicated a physically large picture. Actually, the factors that determine the size of the file is a very complicated relationship between the physical size of the picture, the density of that file, and the level of compression that's used in its definition.

This process seems complicated because it is. Fortunately, most software that comes with a camera, and most consumer oriented picture manipulation programs have a provision that more or less automates this process. As mentioned earlier, with the free Google package called Picasa, this complicated process was reduced to one mouse click.

The important thing to take from this section is that when sending pictures to a printer, use full resolution. When sending it to someone to be viewed on a screen, run it through your software that prepares it for email, or the web. Your recipients will appreciate you for it.

Software for Pictures – Sometimes you might want to have a program that goes a little beyond the capabilities of the software that came with your camera. For this reason, we'll list just a few programs that might extend your capabilities. Some programs are really capable, and therefore expensive while others are more modestly priced, but still useful.

Google Picasa – This free software package just recently came to our attention, but if you're looking for the ability to make basic editing changes, email your photos, archive them, print them, and prepare CDs, this is worth a look. As you might have noticed, we're fans of Google at this magazine, with the Google Maps, Search Engines, and ads, so we like the quality of products Google is offering.

Adobe Photoshop CS – This program is generally accepted as the industry standard in professional image processing. The price tag reflects it too, at about $695.00 retail. We use Photoshop, but we shoot about 30,000 pictures a year.

Adobe Photoshop Elements – This is a “taste” of Photoshop, combining the most common parts of Photoshop that will be useful for most consumers. A bit of a learning curve for this program, but very capable. Retail is around $100.00, but can be bought in the neighborhood of around $60.00.

Corel Paint Shop Pro – This program started off as shareware, but was so good that it went commercial. Many rich features.

Microsoft PictureIt! - This program is available in several different configurations. It is a very good value for its modest cost. Many features that allow easy emailing, and many special effects available. As consumer editing software, this is our first choice.

 

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