Working with digital images

[admin]

Great Website - I have learned a lot reading through it.

A question for you...

I do some freelance work for a magazine, and until recently I have shot exclusively 35 mm.  My photos occasionally end up on the cover, or for use in 2 page spreads.

I recently bought a Digital Rebel EOS with 6.3 megapixels resolution, and apparently the best it can do for the magazine is a 7"x10" photo.  The image I sent them was a high res. JPEG.  Would shooting in a RAW format help get the quality up to an 8x10?  If not, how would I buy a digital camera that is good enough for their purposes - I understand that the resolution of a magazine is governed by the printing process which has a maximum 'lines per inch', what is the equivalent Megapixels?

Thanks, I hope you can help shed some light on a rather complicated issue.

Lonnie


^{Note: this message was posted by admin on behalf of a Digicamhelp site visitor. It was originally received via email. We ask that all such inquiries be posted the Q&A Board.}

[Mike54]

Hi Lonnie and welcome,

Now I must say right up front that I'm no expert and I've certainly never had any images printed by a magazine. If you check Page 48 of the Rebel manual you'll see that the large jpeg format should provide for an A4 size print (slightly larger than 8 x 10) but the image quality is reduced somewhat due to compression. When you shoot using RAW you get everything the sensor picks up without losing any of the quality (note the manual indicates that with RAW you can get A4 size prints and and larger.
I'm going to go with my instincts here and say shoot raw, adjust the RAW file using the Canon software then save your results as tiff. Convert the tiff file to jpeg with as little compression as you can and submit it  to the magazine. It's worth a shot since the next real step up for dslr from the dreb is $$$.
There's no reason the Rebel can't provide the size they need.  I think I'm maybe kinda pretty sure about that.  

[ShutterbugGail]

First, thank you Lonnie for the kind words about the website. So glad you find it helpful!

My sincere apology, but parts of your questions are somewhat beyond the scope of digital photography covered at Digicamhelp. At the end of this post, I'll list a resource where I am confident you will find additional insights regarding your questions.

In addition to the information which has been already shared, or may be posted in the future at this Board, you may find the following information useful.

According to the ePHTOzine article "How to submit digital pictures" (to magazines) it says, in part:
 

"The image's pixel dimensions are the best guide to working out the correct level of detail and resolution. The important factor is not the resolution of a digital image, but the level of detail it contains. Below is a simple guide to help you calculate the optimum image size for the appropriate job in question.

"Pixel Dimensions (approx)  
Thumbnails for Web pages  120 x 90
Images for Web Pages /Emails  640 x 480
Publication (quarter page)  1600 x 1200
Publication (half page)  2400 x 1800
Publication (full page)  3200 x 2400

"Why JPEG?
Another problem magazine editors come up against is images supplied in a unusual format. To save problems later ALWAYS save images in JPEG format. JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group is the name of the committee that designed the photographic image-compression standard. JPEG format is optimised for compressing full-colour or grey-scale photographic-type digital images. The reason for using this format is that any computer system can open JPEG images."

^{Source: http://www.ephotozine.com/articles/viewarticle.cfm?id=19}


In addition to what has been said, I'd like to recommend you visit some of the forums at dpreview, specifically in the Pro Ditial Talk and Canon forums:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/

[Mike54]

Thanks Shutterbug, I know I'm better educated now.

[ShutterbugGail]

Just curious. Can you save to jpeg directly from RAW? Or must you use TIFF in between?


Here's some information for those unfamiliar with various digital camera file formats:

http://www.digicamhelp.com/digital-camera-image-formats/index.htm

[Mike54]

Yes you can save directly to .jpg from the RAW file. I use the intermediate .tif so that I can do additional post processing in PSP (PaintShop Pro). The Canon software is slow to say the least, especially working with the RAW file. (I actually use a third party software for working with the RAW files  ) Without endorsing either they can be found at Breezebrowser[/u] and/or Phase One[/b]

[Deb]

Say, you might also want to look into whether or not your publisher will resample the image for you. "Resampling" is the act of increasing or decreasing the image size in pixels. This is different from scaling. If they do fine. If they don't, then you may want to check out resampling software that does so for you (in a more advanced way than standard photo editing software is able to accomplish). It's easy to incorporate into your digital editing work flow. One such software is "Genuine Fractals". I believe you can find info at http://www.lizardtech.com/.

Also, yep, RAW is definitely the format to use when shooting. Convert after you edit  (being sure to save that edited image as a COPY.  Never overwrite your original.)

Hope this helps.  

Cheers,
Deb

[ShutterbugGail]

For the sake of Q&A Board visitors who may not have a digital camera that offers the RAW format, I'd like to add a few words.

Almost all pros shoot RAW because it has many advantages for them. So do many serious amateur photographers. Currently, this file format is not widely available on digital cameras, except advanced and digital Single Lens Reflex cameras.

RAW images can not be opened by every image editor and they can take longer to process on your computer. Since there is no accepted standard format for RAW files, each manufacturer's format is different.

I use an advanced digital camera, which now has a firmware upgrade to add the RAW file format. I opted not to update. I am perfectly content using jpeg, the standard image file. Jpeg produces outstanding results for both viewing images on the web and for prints. I always shoot at the highest megapixel resolution and quality settings.

[tamas pal]

Hi everyone.

I'm an Art Director for a magazine so hopefully I can give you a little more insight into the use of digital images.

For most consumer magazine work, please submit images straight from your camera in the highest JPG quality. This will not only produce an image which is only very slightly degraded in quality from a RAW file (you'de have to zoom in extremely close to see the difference, which will mainly be a small merging of colors that are very similar in hues).  

So for most magazines, printed at or slightly above 150 lines per inch, this will not be noticeable.

You will not need to "resample" the images when submitting them to a magazine the production crew will take care of that.. By that, I mean, your camera takes pictures at 72 pixels per inch, but magazines require them to be at least 300 pixels per inch. That means that when the art production team takes a 40"x20" image at 72 pixels per inch straight from your camera, and makes it 300 pixels per inch, the size will be reduced to say a 10"x6" or about there, as the existing pixels are compressed to 300 per inch instead of just 72.

Lonnie's digital Rebel, once I resample the images in Adobe Photoshop to the 300 ppi (pixels per inch) that we print them at, at the highest JPG setting, give me a roughly 10"x7" printable image. That may sound small, but this is an image with zero pixel loss. by resampling, I didn't lose any pixels, I just squeezed them into a tighter space.

So now that I have a perfect 10x6 image, I can start blowing it up to whatever size I need it. For a full page, I may make it about 8"x10". But now I'm keeping it at 300ppi and adding more size, so I'm essentially creating pixels that were not there before. Doing this slightly is not noticeable but as I blow the image up to huge proportions, like anything more than 16"X11", I begin to notice "pixelation" occouring, as I'm adding more pixels than the camera originally recorded. The image will start to blur and be less defined.

By the way Lonnie's Rebel took very nice images that can be blown up significantly. I recently compared his JPGs to a slide, professionally scanned, and have noticed the film grain on the slide way before I noticed any serious blurring of his image.

Please send JPGs when submitting to a magazine. It creates files of more manageable sizes with barely diminished quality. I can't stand waiting around to change 200 photos when they all take a minute  to open.

Sorry about the long message, email me if you need more clarification.

[Deb]

Hi, that was a wonderfully informative reply. Thanks!