Photography 101 for Realtors - Part #3

Scanning and Digital Photography

One of the great joys in my life occurred when I discoverd that I could do the same kind of things in my "Digital Darkroom" that I used to do at great time and expense in my REAL darkroom years ago. If you understand real photography, then digital photography makes sense too. Film "grain" has been replaced by "pixels," but much of the physics remain the same. If you are just a beginner in all this, let me give you a short list of particulars to get you into things quicker. Take it on faith - the key is to experiment at first, then set up a system that gives you consistently good results.

About Files: All digital photos are just arrangements of colored dots stored in a computer "file.". There are 3 factors that effect how good and how large a photo file is:

• 1) DPI (Dots Per Inch) - this is like the "graininess" in a photo. Higher DPI means higher quality but also much bigger file sizes. As a starting point, set your SCANNERS to scan at 100DPI if you only are using photos for inkjet prints and internet stuff. Scanning at a higher DPI will NOT make the photo look better on an average printer. If you have a color laser or "photo" inkjet printer, try 150 or 200 DPI.
• 2) Size. Besides the DPI, we also have a picture's original size, usually in inches. If a picture is twice as big, it has 4 times as many "dots," making the file size proportionaltly larger too.
• Sometimes 1) and 2) are put together and the term "pixel" is used for "dots". If you multiply the size of the image, times it's DPI, you will get a total number of dots for the image - this is the total number of pixels. Sometimes images are referred to as "width X height pixels." This term also relates to screen resolutions of most computer monitors - A standard monitor nowadays is often set to 800x600 pixels resolution.
• 3) Color "depth." In color photography, we also have to know what color each "dot" or pixel is to make the whole image look like it did when you took it. "Color Depth" has to do with how many distinctly different fine shades of color you have to use when saving your digital image. Imagine this like the boxes of crayons you could buy as a kid. In the beginning, you got the big fat round ones and only 8 colors. Who cares, you only used one at a time anyway! Then, you graduated to the bigger 16 crayon set, and finally, you got the big box of 64 colors. Professional artists use a "Palette" of colors when painting their masterpieces. They can mix literally millions of different color variations by mixing the paints.... And so it is with digital photography, the more colors in your "palette" the more realistic the appearance of the images. But if you have more "crayons" to choose from, your "box" is bigger too - bigger file sizes again.

Digital pictures can take up a HUGE amount of disk space. So the computer geeks and mathemeticians came up with ways of COMPRESSING these files into more manageable sizes. They figured out that you could be "selective" with your colors and that you could squeeze large areas of similar dots into a smaller space in the file. The file type that is best for photos is called "J-Peg" and files of this type end in ".jpg" So when you scan or work on photos on your computer, .JPG is the way to go for the most universal (e-mailable) format. *Note, you can "squeeze" a photo too far when compressing it, and then it starts to look patchy or broken up. Try various settings in your programs or else try what they do automatically and see if it doesn't work better and faster this way! Once you have experimented to find the best sizes, settings, DPI, etc, lock in the procedure and do it the same way all the time.

Scanning Tips:

• Make some tape marks on your scanner margins for typical picture sizes so you can have things "preset" to make a quick scan. Some scanners allow you to pre-scan 3-4 photos at a time on the glass and then you can scan each one of them quickly by moving your scanning window around or else scan the whole thing at once and then crop/save each individual image.
• Try lots of settings. Most scanner software has lots of settings such as auto-manual, auto-exposure, auto-sharpen, etc. etc. Some will actually do the whole thing. Try these various settings to see what makes the best image for your main use, such as PREP or Top Producer or MSPublisher, etc. Investing an hour or two of "research" to find the best light-dark settings etc. lets you set up an exact system that matches your particular combination of hardware and software. Also note the settings for DPI as we discussed above. I recommend 100 DPI.
• Shrink down, don't blow up! When making scans of graphics or photos, keep in mind the fi nal size you want to use the scans. If you have a very teeny-tiny logo from a business card, do not expect to make this look good at a full 8.5x11 size. On the other hand, you can usually make most things look *better* if you reduce them in size from their original. This is why most logo artwork is done at a larger size by hand and then shrunk down photo-mechanically. When you do have to "blow something up," use a much larger DPI so you have more dots in that teeny tiny image to play with.

Camera Tips

• Organize! Make an Album, Folder, or Directory on your hard drive just for digital photos. Each time you shoot a "roll" or a bunch of shots of the same house, event, day, trip, etc, - create a "sub-folder" or sub-directory under your "Digicam" directory and then name the folder for the event, etc. You can then "drag" the photos from the camera, floppy, or card-reader and "drop" them into this folder/album. I even put the dates in my folder names so that they sort themselves chronologically.
• Always keep the original file from the camera as your "negative" - dont *save* over the top of this file. Open this file and then "Save As" a different file name when you have made a copy or "print" from the original. This way, you can crop, resize, etc without effecting the original. You might want to make a very small photo now for e-mailing but you might also want to make a larger or different print sometime in the future. Or you might want to try some special effects... If you have the "original" file, you have the best quality and all the image to work with. Most cameras give the pictures a crazy name like "DSC000025.jpg" anyway. Once you have made your crops, etc., you can "save-as" "123MainSt.jpg" in the same file folder as the originals. This makes a good filing system and you can "find things" later when you need to e-mail that photo to someone.
• Be careful about the newer cameras and scanners and how big a file they can make! "MegaPixel" means "millions of pixels" - remember our lesson above? So usually, you want to set the camera on its lowest" resolution setting if you mostly want to e-mail pics or put them on a web site. Even using the lowest setting on my Nikon Coolpix900S, I still reduce the size of most of the files before I e-mail them to someone. It is very RUDE to send someone a HUGE photo file via e-mail - it can crash their machine or keep them from reading other mail for hours.... If you use very large files in your desktop publishing, it takes MUCH longer for the pages to print, but they usually don't look much better...

Chas. Campbell is the Publisher and Webmaster of MNRealty.com,
An independent Minnesota Real Estate Web Server and Host.