A Brief Primer on Digital Photos
by Ken W. Watson
This little section of my website will deal with the world of digital photography and digital photos. It will answer some of the basic questions about digital photography such as "What exactly is a digital photo", "What is DPI", and "How do I properly archive digital photos." I've had bits and pieces of this on various sections of my website, this page brings it all together.
DIGITAL PHOTO PIXELS
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The following are links to a series of articles that deals with various aspects of digital photography. Some was initially written for the specific use of digital photography in genealogy - but the information has application to all aspects of digital photography:
What is a Digital Photo - an article dealing with the basics of a digital photo - from pixels to common digital photo formats.
Storing Digital Photos - your only "negatives" are your computer files. Are they safe? Have they been backed up? Have you developed a "workflow" to ensure the preservation of your photos?
Labelling Digital Photos - digital photos have no back to write on - so how do you label them? The mysteries of IPTC and XMP metadata.
The Myth of DPI - the term DPI (dots per inch) is misinterpreted by some to be a measure of digital image quality - but it has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of a digital image. Learn about what really makes up the quality of a digital photo.
Printing at Home - don't downsample (resize) those images for printing - it's an easy mistake to make with some photo software. How to print while maintaining your pixels.
What Commercial Print Shops really Want - Some print shops, graphics designers and magazines are hung up on DPI. So given that DPI is meaningless in a digital photo, what do they really want? (hint: PPI).
Changing Digital Photo DPI - how to change the DPI of your digital photo without resizing the image. How to give a print shop what they think they want.
How to Change the Size of a Digital Photo - all about resizing and saving photos for specific purposes - archiving, printing, web posting, emailing.
Digital Photos Frequently Asked Questions - a little FAQ answering some common questions about digital photos.
Geotagging Digital Photos - a very brief introduction to adding geographic location information (latitude and longitude) to your digital photos.
I'm generally loath to recommend specific software, but some of the programs mentioned in these articles include: Breezebrowser (www.breezesys.com) a commercial thumbnail viewing program that I use for many jobs, including batch entry of IPTC data and batch resizing of images. Adobe Photoshop (www.adobe.com) is generally considered the premier photo editing program. It's very expensive and for most users the much less expensive Adobe Photoshop Elements is all that is needed. Irfanview (www.irfanview.com) is notable both because it's a good photo editing program and it's free. Another noteable freeware program is Google's Picasa (picasa.google.com), a good photo organizer program.
For additional information about digital photos, you may be interested in my Digital Photos and Genealogy website which discusses the use of digital photography as it applies to genealogy.
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Comments: send me email: Ken Watson