Get the most out of your photos

In the last issue, I shared tips about taking photos, so now let’s talk about what to do with digital photos afterwards. Yes, you could just leave them all on your phone and do nothing else, but most people want to use or share them.

Web vs. print—battle of the dots

You may have written for Japan Harvest and submitted a photo you previously uploaded to social media, and then were told that the designer (yup, that’s me) says it’s too small. In this case, you’ve run into the tension between the web and print. You might have thought, “It looks fine to me on this website,” but you’re experiencing an optical illusion. The screens of phones and computers make color visible in a completely different way from printed ink on paper. Additionally, the density of pixels (dots of colored light on a screen) is normally far lower than the density of ink dots on paper. Those two factors combined make it possible for an image to look fine on a screen (where your eyes are used to the low pixel density) but blurry if printed at the same physical size.

The original photos taken with a phone or camera usually have plenty of pixels for almost any purpose, including print. But websites don’t send those full-size photos to the browser because that would cause the page to load way too slowly. For the sake of speed, websites will normally reduce the number of pixels to make the files much smaller. Even some email apps shrink attached photos by default. Online photo storage services like Google Photos and iCloud Photos will save “as original” if you choose that in settings, but due to the limited free storage, your main long-term storage of photos should probably be on your computer. Of course, there is no reason to save every shot you take—delete the duds and duplicates and only keep the good ones.

The right file type for the job

An image file doesn’t simply store each pixel’s color value—the data is compressed to make the file much smaller. There are various file types, each with their own method of compression that is better at compressing some types of images than others. JPEG (also called JPG) is by far the most common compression type for photos. There are a few very new ones that are more efficient but not yet usable on all devices. Another very common file type is PNG, which is good for computer-generated graphics that have a limited number of colors and sharp edges, like logos or screenshots.

JPG compression is “lossy,” meaning that some of the color information is approximated instead of reproduced exactly. But this works fine for photos, as the compressor keeps more data in complex areas of the photo and estimates more in smooth, out-of-focus, or darker areas. Good software will allow you to choose the level of quality when you save an image as a JPG; a higher quality setting will compress less, resulting in a larger file.

It’s important to use the right file type for the content. If you save a photo as PNG, the file will become much bigger than necessary because PNG compression is not good for photos. On the other hand, if you save a computer graphic as JPG, the compression will cause “noise” near edges, as shown here. Just remember to use the right file type.

Simple editing

You don’t have to own expensive software to improve your photos. Even your phone probably has basic editing, and there are many free tools for computers. Perhaps the first editing task to consider is cropping, particularly when using photos in social media—your photo will have more impact if you remove useless extra area before uploading. In an editing tool, cropping is commonly grouped together with rotation, which is also handy if the camera wasn’t straight when the shot was taken. Color balance and brightness adjustments can also be helpful.

If you use Windows, I highly recommend a free tool called Irfanview (irfanview.com). I set it as the default program to open all image files, and even though I own Photoshop, I use Irfanview for well over 90% of the editing I need to do because it’s easy to use, fast, and capable. It’s also great for batch processing (doing the same thing to many images in one step). Unfortunately, it’s not available for Macs. (Tip: Even if you have 64-bit Windows, install the 32-bit version of Irfanview—see the website for details.)

This is highly simplified to fit on one page, but I hope you found something useful. Search the web to learn more or feel free to ask me any questions.

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