Category Archives: Photography

When Size Matters

As designers, when you are asked to create graphics or edit photos for a project what questions do you ask?

There are many design considerations that jump to mind:

What message needs to be conveyed?

What’s the color scheme?

Is there a predefined style book to follow or corporate standards for fonts and colors?

There are so many creative questions to ask to meet and match the needs and branding of a project or client, but as they say the devil can be in the details. The details that should be near the top of the list is how is each asset going to be used, and what is the biggest the size each asset needs to be.

Raster Images

Raster images, which are pixel-based images, like photos, scale down well, but scaling them up can impact image quality. There are some artificial intelligence driven software products that can do some impressive work enlarging pixel images, but it’s still a process of interpolation and estimation to create the new extra pixels, it’s better to try to create the original image at the size needed or bigger.

Vector Image

Now, vector images can be resized without impacting image quality, but sometimes the final destination(s) of the asset will require creating raster version(s) of the asset, like saving a copy of a .SVG or Adobe Illustrator file (.AI) as a .JPG. In this case, you’ll want to know the size to make each version.

File Size

The other dimension of size, particularly important for images heading to the web, is file size in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes, because that size will impact the speed in which an asset will download to a browser. I’m sure we’ve all visited sites where images and videos were incredibly slow to render in our browsers.

Example

Here’s an example, say you are posting something on your own blog and what to include a feature image, and that image is going to be a photo you took while on vacation. I have a photo I took of the Boston skyline, its RAW image from the camera was 6000 pixels by 4000 pixels and was a 23 MB file. I brought it into Photoshop to edit it and when I saved a JPG copy it was JPG 12.3 MB at 6000 x 4000, but why would I want to put an image 6000 pixel wide on a web page when even a hi-def monitor usually tops out at 1920 x 1080, and many people are still using monitors that are 1200 x 1080 or even less. I know it’s a lot of numbers, but let’s make it simple, I’d be happy with an image that is 600 pixels wide, so I’ll reduce the image to 600 x 400 and save it as a high quality JPG, that’s only 10% or 1/10 the size of the full size JPG, but my new file is only JPG 244 KB 600 x 400, not 1.2 MB, that’s 98% reduction in file size. Now, when saving a jpg you can choose the quality from 1 -12, 12 being the highest quality. If I save the image as a JPG with a quality of 10, I get a file size of JPG 141 KB 600 x 400, and at 8 and get JPG 101 KB 600 x 400, which is less than 1% the size of the full size jpg.

Here are all three 600 x 400 JPGs, can you see a difference?

Boston Cityscape 600 x 400 Quality 12
Boston Cityscape – 600 x 400 – Quality 12 example
Boston Cityscape - 600 x 400 - Quality 10
Boston Cityscape – 600 x 400 – Quality 10 example
Boston Cityscape - 600 x 400 - Quality 8
Boston Cityscape – 600 x 400 – Quality 8 example

Now, if I was sending this to print, then I’d only crop the image to the size I want and wouldn’t worry about how many megabytes the file was.

How About Video?

This same type of example works for video too. We shoot video, today’s cameras can shoot video as high definition (HD) at 1280 x 720, full high definition (FHD) at 1920 x 1080, 4k at 3840 x 2160, and even 8k at 7680 x 4320, but editing software can render your videos to custom sizes too. If you are creating an eLearning module in Storyline or Captivate and plan to embed it into the project, check the size or resolution of your project, I’d bet it’s smaller than HD. With video files it’s easy to jump from file sizes of megabytes to gigabytes very quickly, so properly sizing your video shouldn’t be overlooked, and just like JPGs, you can also render videos at different qualities to find the perfect balance between files size and video image quality, and also like JPGs, a little reduction in quality can be a big savings in file size.

What Size Do You Need?

Well, if it’s your own project and you’re not being given specs, then here’s one simple-ish method.

Have you ever noticed the “Print Screen” button on your keyboard? Have you ever used it? I use it to figure out graphic sizes for the web all the time. The “Print Screen” button will copy your screen into memory and you can paste the image into any photo editing software, even MS Paint. Now, you can go to your website, pull up your blog, “print screen”, paste that image into your photo editing software, now you’ll be seeing your website in the software, then using the selection tool – make a selection that you determine to be the right size to place an image into, and crop the image of your website down to that selected area. At this point, either your software should be able to show you the dimensions of the cropped image, and that’s the size you want. If your software doesn’t show this, save the image, navigate to the folder with the image file in it, and your OS should have a way to show you the dimensions, on a PC it would be right-click on the file, click “Properties”, and then click the “Details” tab.

What issues have you found balancing quality and file size? What other file or format issues would you suggest new designers explore? 

Why you should shoot RAW unless…

Al Conant

As a photographer you’ve probably heard the great debate about whether you should set your camera to shoot JPG or RAW files. People can be pretty hardcore about this subject, and many see this as a simple binary question, but photography isn’t a binary practice.

Subject matters

Every time you pick up your camera, are you the same photographer? Do you use the same settings or are you in the same mindset when you are shooting portraits, landscapes, sporting events, or a personal family party? Do you edit and distribute every photo you take the same way? No, you aren’t, no you don’t, and no you wouldn’t. Similarly, shouldn’t default to either JPG or RAW.

RAW the overall superior format

RAW files, by far, contain more information and can give you the highest quality results that your camera can produce and allows for much more flexibility when post-processing. However, what is more important is being able to get the right shot in the first place. A high-quality image that misses a key moment is worthless.

But sometimes JPG is the best option

Shooting sports is a situation in which shooting JPG is the better option. Why? A digital camera can shoot more consecutive photos when saving to JPG vs RAW. When you take a digital photo, the image is quickly stored in fast-writing temporarily-memory referred to as the buffer and then, in a slower process, the images are transferred to the memory card in the camera. When your camera’s buffer is full, it will stop taking additional images until space is freed up. Now, in comparison a RAW file can be 2 to 6 times the size of a JPG file shooting the same image. This means RAW files will fill up your buffer faster, lower your number of shots per second, and limit the number of consecutive photos you can take. In sports shooting RAW can definitely cause you to miss key moments in the action. When shooting a baseball game, you’re more likely to capture the split second when the ball connects with the bat when you are shooting in the JPG file format.

Another time you might consider shooting JPG is when you don’t plan to edit the photos. When you shoot a RAW photo and see it displayed on the back of your camera did you know that you are actually seeing a JPG representation of that RAW file? In addition, in order to display that JPG representation the camera processes the image, converting it to an 8-bit image and applying an exposure preset. If you have ever shot RAW then you’ve seen this effect, the image on the back of your camera will look better than the unprocessed RAW file on your computer. The RAW file format is meant to capture significantly more image data than a JPG, and the resulting images are flatter with less contrast compared to a JPG. RAW files are meant to be edited, and when they are not they will not look as good as the JPGs your camera can produce.

What are you going to do with the photos?

Related to this is the situation when you want to share the photos quickly. Sometimes we are taking “Photographs” and we are in the role of photographer or artist, other times we’re taking snapshots, like when you’re out with friends or at a family event. These are photos you will typically not edit, and you want to post them or send them to family and friends quickly. You can’t post a RAW file, and if you email one there is no guarantee the recipients can view it. With sports even professional photographers shoot JPG in order to send the files off quick publication.

RAW+JPG

Now, if you’re not shooting sports, you want to share photos quickly, but you might want to spend time editing some of the photos for later distribution, then it’s time to use the best of both worlds option, RAW + JPG. Most digital cameras will allow you to save off both RAW and JPG versions of each photo you take, note that this is the fastest way to fill your camera’s buffer, but if the number of shots per second or a high number of consecutive shots aren’t important factors, RAW + JPG can be your perfect solution.

I created a video that goes into a bit more depth as to the differences between JPG and RAW. Here’s the video.

What’s your opinion? Do you have any situational file format rules that you follow? Have you ever been burned by shooting in the wrong format? Leave a comment below.

Post Categories: