The Letterville BullBoard: Frustrated with output options for digital pics... new questions

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Posted by Donna in BC (Member # 130) on :

Hi guys,

I'm happily clicking away great pictures with my digital Kodak D215 zoom, however stumped on something.

My camera takes 12" x 16" pictures. What I then do is bring them into Corel 8, downsize them to 4.5" x 6".(which is to scale with 12" x 16" without distortion) Well, my photo album holds 4" x 6". Because I can't crop a bitmap in Corel, I then bring it into Corel Photopaint, crop it, then bring it back into corel to print, because I want to stack them to get the most out of photo paper.

The problem not to even mention all these steps, is the final output. It appears with the photopaint revision and final export into corel, I lose some sharpness and color vibrance on the pictures. If I print straight out of corel without cropping the pics, they look crisper.

A few questions.

1. Why on earth do digital cameras take such large pictures? Do any cameras give you an option to create smaller ones right from the get-go?

2. Any other ideas on how I can maximize quality and paper stacking to get the image I'm looking for?

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Graphic Impact
located in BC Canada
gisigns@sprint.ca

Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :

Donna,

With Corel 6 and higher, you can crop a photo using the "node edit tool.

As to question #1.....

The reason why the photos come out so large on the monitor has much to do with pixels vs. resolution. The fact is that you do want to have the image that large to start off with. It is easier to start large and go small than to do the reverse without losing detail.

As to question #2....

How you export and import can have a large impact on vibrancy and sharpness. Do not "cut'n'paste from Draw to Paint. It loses information in the translation. Use either the native CPT or TIF if you intend on printing the photos out. If you use GIF or JPG, you are going to lose some of the color information.

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:) Design is Everything! :)
Glenn Taylor
in beautiful North Carolina
http://members.tripod.com/taylor_graphics

walldog@bbnp.com

Posted by Donna in BC (Member # 130) on :

It works Glenn! Thanks! I had no idea you could crop with the node edit tool.

Therefore, the two extra exporting steps are no longer required. This is great! Thanks.

However, back to the jpg info you provided. The camera automatically saves the pics as jpg. I'm assuming you mean, don't use jpg if exporting them from program to program? Or do you mean I need to bring them into corel and change the extention to print better quality?

(I was exporting back and forth as jpg)

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Graphic Impact
located in BC Canada
gisigns@sprint.ca

[This message has been edited by Donna in BC (edited February 26, 2000).]

Posted by Sarah Clark (Member # 413) on :

I dont have digital camera so dont know how they work. Is it saving the picture as a compressed jpg or in 72ppi? This would look ok on your screen but not printed. Glenn is right that a pretty high resolution tiff is best for printing. When you make it smaller you can resample or not. Meaning if its a 72ppi pic you could make it smaller and still be 72ppi meaning its lost a lot. Or you could make it smaller size but retaining all the pixels making it higher resolution. I dont know how you do this in photopaint as I use a different program. It usually helps to sharpen a picture a little too when you resize it.

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S. Clark
Clark Signs (retired)
Compton, Arkansas
sasc@alltel.net
http://members.xoom.com/sclark/

Posted by Glenn Taylor (Member # 162) on :

Donna,

Printing from the "original" JPG should be fine. Its the going back and forth that is part of the problem.

Try scaling down the original JPG to a 3x5 or so and print. Take the same JPG and export it to Corel Photopaint and back to Coreldraw and then print it. Compare the two prints. Then export the original JPG as a TIF. Import it back and print. Compare the 3 prints and see if you can tell any difference. You should see a better quality image in the TIF.

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:) Design is Everything! :)
Glenn Taylor
in beautiful North Carolina
http://members.tripod.com/taylor_graphics

walldog@bbnp.com

Posted by Bruce Evans (Member # 44) on :

open the picture in photoshop....cause it's the best. covert it from 72 d.p.i. to 300 dpi....then size it down to what you want....then save it as a photoshop file....import it into any program you use...print it.

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Bruce Evans

Posted by Stephen Deveau (Member # 1305) on :

Hi Donna
just a question or two!!!
I just bought the 215 Millinium gold camera.
Loving every picture that I take with it.
It came with the SanDisk downloading reader and software.. Did you get the same package??
I cannot for the life of me get this to work.
I have been exporting the pictures from the camera to computer but it likes to chew up the battery power...Have looked into a DC adapter and was told it would cost around $85.00... It's a great way to take a picture of your customers store front and show the final image of their signs for approvial..
Hows the weather out West as we here in the East are having a few days in the plus 10 area..Washed the little black Saturn today and cleaned up the lawn...

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Raven/2000
Airbrushed by Raven
Lower sackville N.S.
deveausdiscovery@sprint.ca

Posted by Mayo Pardo (Member # 138) on :

You cannot create pixels out of thin air.
Resampling an original 72DPI picture up to 300DPI will not give you good results.

The computer will "estimate" what additional info needs to be put in to make up the extra DPI and that extra info may or may not have any resemblance to info in the real world subject that the picture is made from.

I find that Micrografx Picture Publisher does just as much as Photoshop, using WAY less memory, and costs heaps less. It's about $150 approx.

If you want to ultimately make prints of your digital camera pics, make sure your camera is set to it's highest resolution.
You will get less pictures on each memory card or floppy disk but they will print out better.

Pictures for internet e-mail or web usage should be about 72 or 75 DPI. They open quicker and that's about all the DPI most people's monitors show anyway.

Each time you open and resave a .jpg it will loose some quality.

Regardless of the digital camera being used, *most* pictures need sharpening or contrast and brightness adjustments.

I find the best sequence to use is to do all editing to the image first, like contrast, brightness, gamma correction, hue, etc. then if necessary, resize it. Then after resizing do your sharpening. Then save and print.

Resizing by cropping will not change the DPI.
Resizing by resampling may or may not change the DPI depending on your settings.
If your software allows you to resize (smaller) and maintain original file size, that will give you better results than resizing and also letting the file size get smaller.

Instead of editing in one place and printing in another (requiring saving and extra steps) why not create a new (empty) printer paper size page in Corel Photo Paint at the same DPI as your pictures, then click and drag your edited and resized pictures into this page and then print this instead of reassembling and printing them from Coreldraw? You wouldn't even have to save this composite if you had already saved each individual picture.

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EmpY® is also known as...Mayo Pardo
Visit my 90 day Australian adventure at
http://www.difsupply.com/trippin.html
When I'm not in Australia, I'm at
14 N 041 Gunpowder Ln.
Elgin IL 60123
847 931-4171

Posted by Gail & Dave Beattie (Member # 572) on :

empy's right, photopaint is all u need to use to work with your pics, editing and printing...or saving!
resample alows you to set size and dpi inderpendantly of each other, but you cant just create dots from nufin like he said so you take your pics or set your scans to the best they can be...then edit from this 'better'source..... once you have what you want then resize.

remember my digi cam is way old so i dont have all the wonderfull controls that u folks have i have to fiddle more to get a half resonale end result
hehehe

regards
gail

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Gail & Dave
Those strange Ozies
who eat TimTams and Pavlova & have been seen loitering around letterhead meetings since 1996

Insanity is hereditory....you get it from your kids!

Posted by Donna in BC (Member # 130) on :

All great advice.

Empy, I guess I just don't know my way around photopaint all that well yet. Not sure how to stack several pictures on one page, that's why I brought it back to corel. Something I need to work on. Thanks.

Stephen, I don't touch the software my camera came with. We bought a special adaptor, it has it's own 'drive', put the camera cards in that to load onto the puter. INSTANT. The adaptor was about $135ish. We also went to a battery recharger and good batteries. Both are wise investments and yes, they are hidden costs of any digital camera, but it's best to have the right tools to do the job.

I've been printing the pics out at 200 dpi and they are wonderful. I did what Glenn suggested, compared a few, taking notes on what steps I did. The more I messed and resaved with them, the worse they got.

I find knowing how to crop them in corel has fixed what was originally broke in this scenario for me. However, I will try some new suggestions and see if the quality improves.

Very good info here. Hope to see more ideas.

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Graphic Impact
located in BC Canada
gisigns@sprint.ca

Posted by Kelli (Member # 248) on :

Hi Donna, I import my images into PhotoShop (I just like it better than PhotoPaint) and do my color corrections and other touch ups and save. I don't usually bother re-sizing here, but will bring them into Corel and use the Powerclip tool to place the photos inside a 4x6 rectangle. I then use Powerclip-Edit command to resize or move the photo within the rectangle. Doing it this way preserves the original image and allows me to utilize as much of the photo as possible within the rectangle I placed it in. The cool thing with the Powerclip feature is the ability to powerclip images within non traditional shapes, including text.

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Kelli Cajigas aka Janda
Dolphin deSigns & Banners
“A satisfied customer will tell two friends, a dissatisfied customer will tell ten.”

Posted by Larry Elliott (Member # 263) on :

Donna,
Every time you edit and save a pic in the JPG format you'll lose some quality because it re-compresses it with every save. Your camera saves it the first time as a JPG so it can get as many shots as possible on the memory card. CorelDraw can do some bitmap editing but the 'resample' and 'export' of bitmaps is crude compared to PhotoPaint. I've used digital cameras for nearly two years now and on any images that we will be using for print work will be opened in P-Paint and saved as .CPT (this is Corel's lossless compression and it supports objects, masks, and alpha channels) all editing is done in P-Paint and can easily be brought into Draw for adding (editable) text and graphics. CPT's with objects can be re-compositioned in Draw to better help layout the whole composition. Finally the CPT will be made a CMYK TIF, sharpened and saved, ready for print. Sounds like a lot of steps but when you become accustomed to the tools it goes quite fast. For your purpose of printing out your 4x6's, I would build them as follows:
Open your JPG in P-Paint, save it as (filename.CPT), resample it to 200 DPI at 6" in length and be sure 'maintain aspect ratio' and 'anti alias' is selected. Create a rectangular mask 4"x6" and save the mask to disk (you'll need it for each image you resize) Open the mask and using the mask placement tool (in the mask tools drop-down)
move the mask to where you want to crop the image. Select 'crop to mask' in the image menu, remove the mask and save (Ctrl-S). Color correct, edit or whatever it needs and you're ready to save and print. If it's going into a commercial print job then save it as a CMYK TIF, if you want to print it from your desktop printer leave it as a CPT (the file size will be a LOT smaller). VERY simple once you get the hang of it and a whole lot cleaner than if it was done in Draw. Hope this hasn't been too confusing, Draw is one of the best graphic tools available but it's not ready for prime time in the pixel editing arena, stay in Paint for that part and you can create some stunning images from a digital camera.

Larry Elliott.....

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