Understanding and Simplifying the Pixels and DPI's
Digital photography printing and professional cameras for photography have opened new avenues for amateur and professional photographers alike. For most photographers, the backup of digital photography printing offers unprecedented freedom to get the best shots. No more worrying about wasting that precious piece of film running out, in addition to not knowing for sure that anything worthwhile is on it!
However, whens using professional cameras for photograhyand getting the printing done, there are a few things one should keep in mind to prevent wasting too much of quality photo paper, and the costly printing ink. In this article, we'll review a few basic terms related to digital photography and offer a few tips on getting the best prints.
Resolution
Resolution refers to the 'image-sharpness' of a document, and is usually measured in dots (or pixels) per inch (DPI). It also refers to the image-sharpness that printers and monitors are capable of reproducing. Depending on your particular needs, documents can be scanned at various resolutions. The higher the resolution of a document, greater the image-sharpness, and larger the file size will be.
When using DSLR's like Nikon d5100 and with digital photography printing in mind, the first thing you need to ensure is that you download the pictures at their full resolution. If in the end, you have 72dpi (dots per inch) pictures, your print quality will be useless. A 72dpi resolution is good for viewing on your computer screen, but an image with 200 to 300dpi will give a good quality 8x10 inch print.
Pixel
Pixel is short for 'Picture Element.' It is the smallest part of a digital image, and each image is comprised of thousands or millions of pixels. This basic unit, from which a video or computer picture is made, is essentially a dot with a given colour and brightness value. The more pixels an image has, the higher the resolution of that image will be. One Megapixel is equal to one million pixels.
JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a standards committee that designed this image compression format. The compression format they designed is known as a 'lossy' compression, as it deletes information from an image that it considers unnecessary. JPEG files can range from small amounts of lossless compression to large amounts of lossy compression. This is a common standard on the World Wide Web, but the data loss generated in its compression makes it undesirable for printing purposes.
When dealing with digital photography printing, you will mostly work with the JPEG file format. Remember that every time you open and save a JPEG file, you lose some of the image information. Therefore, it is advisable to do all the changes in one sitting, and then save them only once.
However, whens using professional cameras for photograhyand getting the printing done, there are a few things one should keep in mind to prevent wasting too much of quality photo paper, and the costly printing ink. In this article, we'll review a few basic terms related to digital photography and offer a few tips on getting the best prints.
Resolution
Resolution refers to the 'image-sharpness' of a document, and is usually measured in dots (or pixels) per inch (DPI). It also refers to the image-sharpness that printers and monitors are capable of reproducing. Depending on your particular needs, documents can be scanned at various resolutions. The higher the resolution of a document, greater the image-sharpness, and larger the file size will be.
When using DSLR's like Nikon d5100 and with digital photography printing in mind, the first thing you need to ensure is that you download the pictures at their full resolution. If in the end, you have 72dpi (dots per inch) pictures, your print quality will be useless. A 72dpi resolution is good for viewing on your computer screen, but an image with 200 to 300dpi will give a good quality 8x10 inch print.
Pixel
Pixel is short for 'Picture Element.' It is the smallest part of a digital image, and each image is comprised of thousands or millions of pixels. This basic unit, from which a video or computer picture is made, is essentially a dot with a given colour and brightness value. The more pixels an image has, the higher the resolution of that image will be. One Megapixel is equal to one million pixels.
JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) is a standards committee that designed this image compression format. The compression format they designed is known as a 'lossy' compression, as it deletes information from an image that it considers unnecessary. JPEG files can range from small amounts of lossless compression to large amounts of lossy compression. This is a common standard on the World Wide Web, but the data loss generated in its compression makes it undesirable for printing purposes.
When dealing with digital photography printing, you will mostly work with the JPEG file format. Remember that every time you open and save a JPEG file, you lose some of the image information. Therefore, it is advisable to do all the changes in one sitting, and then save them only once.
