New Year's Eve 2006

[Brett Cambern]

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My wife (with champagne glass) and some friends celebrating last night.

 

D-Lux 2 JPEG, straight out of camera. I have yet to learn any post processing skills but I thought this shot captured the fun of the night.

 

Oops, just noticed how bad photo looks. I need to re-size it smaller.

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[Brett Cambern]

Let's see if this works better. BTW, how do you preview the photo when you preview the post? When I hit preview post, all I see is the text, not the photo.

 

Thanks,

Brett

 

OK, I still need help here. Why does the quality look so bad? When I view it full screen on my computer it looks very sharp.

 

Thanks in advance for helping out a newbie.

[adan]

Hoo-boy - as to why it looks so bad, it looks like a very small image uprezzed (bands in the palm frond and dress strap, as well as the general fuzziness).

 

Also I notice that it is in RGB, which means you're sending 3x more data than you need to for a B&W image. Convert it to grayscale before creating the jpeg for posting and you'll get the same image with 1/3rd the file size.

 

What steps are you using to prepare the image for posting?

 

Here's one of my New Year's shots (M8, iso 1250, dng original, 50 'cron) - "Watching the fireworks"

[Brett Cambern]

Andy,

 

Thanks so much for replying. This was shot on my D-Lux 2 with the "Color Effect" set to B&W so this is how it came out of the camera. I noticed this is different from my Digilux2 where you set B&W under "White Balance" - could this explain why it is in RGB? (sorry if this is a stupid question - I'm not exactly sure how you could tell it was in RGB nor the implications of it being in RGB).

 

The only thing I did to the image was to re-size it for posting. In the first photo, I just made sure it was less than the max file size allowed for uploading. When I saw how bad that looked, I just picked a random smaller size to see if it would look any better.

 

BTW, I have posted a couple of pictures from my Digilux2 and, while they didn't look as good as they did on my screen, they didn't look nearly as bad as the D-Lux 2 shots.

 

Any suggestions would be very welcome.

 

Thanks!

Brett

 

p.s. Nice shot!

[adan]

As to how I could tell it was RGB - I swiped it off the page here and opened it in Photoshop.

 

Most digital cameras that shoot in a "B&W" mode actually just give you a desaturated RGB file if you shoot jpeg (and a full-color file anyway in RAW - but that's another story). Even the M8 and the Digilux 2.

 

As I said, the diagonal jaggies in the dress strap of the woman with the champagne glass, and in the palm frond right above the champagne, make this look like it was uprezzed from a very small image - a thumbnail or some such.

 

So let's see what we can figure out. What software are you using for image handling, especially for setting the picture up for posting? iphoto? Photoshop? Photoshop Elements?

 

And what steps are you taking to reduce the big ol' original 8 Mpixel file down to posting size?

[Brett Cambern]

Andy,

 

I have Photoshop Elements 3. With the picture open in edit mode, I click "Image", then "Resize", and then "Image Size". In the dialog box that opens, I then randomly plugged in pixel dimensions until I got it below the allowable 244kb. I did not change any of the other default settings in that dialog box (the following three boxes were checked: "Scale Styles", "Constrain Proportions", and "Resample Image - Bicubic"). When I saw how bad the first picture looked, I then just picked a much smaller pixel dimension but the result was still poor.

 

I really appreciate your responses and taking the time to help. My New Year's resolution is to learn how to use some of these post-processing tools and I am looking for a local class to learn them properly.

 

Thanks again for your help,

Brett

 

p.s. It was very cool that you responded to my plea for help. When I bought my Digilux2 (my wife later bought me the D-Lux2) I had read your review of the camera and it helped convince me to buy. Your review is still saved as a favorite on my browser.

[adan]

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Brett: had to wait until I got a chance to check Elements 3's menu choices on my wife's machine.

 

Try the following as a first shot at a workflow for sizing images to post.

 

1. Open photo

 

2. If it's a B&W shot, make sure it's grayscale. Go to menu "Image > Mode > Grayscale" and say "yes' when PE3 asks if you really want to discard color information. For color pictures, skip this step.

 

2A. For color shots, they will look best on the web in sRGB color space. I can't find any color settings in Elements, so I think it defaults to sRGB, so you won't have to worry about this yet. But if you ever upgrade to full PS, you'll want to make sure you convert to sRGB. Shots left in Adobe 1998 or other "big" color spaces look very unsaturated and dull when read by web browsers.

 

3. Go to menu "Image" > "Resize" >"Image Size". The three boxes should be checked "on", as you describe. IGNORE THE OVERALL FILE SIZE at this point, and just choose pixel dimensions in the top two number boxes. You want the longest dimension to be between about 500 pixels and whatever the upper limit is for the place you will be posting. Here on LUF it is 960 pixels. My image above is about 750 pixels by 500 pixels, for reference. Click "OK"

 

4. Go to menu "File > Save for Web" Make sure the format for saving will be jpeg, not gif. Then play with the "Quality" slider near the top right until the file size at the bottom left of the image window is in the range you want (but try to keep the quality level above "50" or "60"). You'll be able to see how the compression affects the picture live in the window - for grins you can set the quality to 10 or so to see a really nasty version of your shot (with a microscopic file size). But at 50-60 quality it should be very easy to compress a 750-pixel grayscale image to a file size under 100K (and color to under 200K) while keeping it sharp and clean.

 

5. Once you are happy with the quality and file size, hit the "save" button top right, and be sure to rename the file in the next dialogue box so it doesn't overwrite your original .jpg (plus it's easier to comprehend "3women_2007.jpg" than "L1001041.jpg". Also make sure you keep track of WHERE it is being saved. I have a default folder called "ToWeb" to save my "web-quality" files.

 

6. Then proceed to log on and post.

 

Try it and let's see how that shot REALLY looks!

[Brett Cambern]

Andy,

 

First, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to research my problem and provide such a detailed explanation. It is greatly appreciated.

 

I apologize for not responding sooner but I just got back from watching the Buckeyes get clobbered by the Gators in Arizona. At least the weather was better out there than back here in Columbus. I left 70 degree weather and returned to 30's and snow.

 

Let's see how this version comes out:

 

Andy- now that I can see it that is a huge improvement (though still not a perfect picture). Thanks again for your help!!!

[jmr]

Brett,

 

Andy's instructions are indeed very clear. You might like to know that in Elements 3 you can alter the image size from within the "Save for Web" dialogue. That means you can miss out step 3.

 

Hope you post some more shots.

[Brett Cambern]

John,

 

Thanks for the shortcut tip. So much to learn, so little time.

 

Regards,

Brett