Larger and Faster Storage is on the Horizon

Larger and faster storage is on the horizon!
At the current rate at which silicon-based technology doubles – approximately every 18-24 months, it won’t be long before our cameras outgrow their present storage form-factors. Nikon, SanDisk and Sony have announced their joint effort for a new portable storage specification aimed at meeting the future needs of music playback devices, digital cameras and video capture devices in a new standardized format.

The new proposed specs show a transfer rate of 500 Megabytes per second – far exceeding the present 167 Megabyte per second of the current CompactFlash specifications. Yes, that is a full gigabyte transferred every two seconds. The maximum theoretical storage capacity for the new devices are expected to exceed two Terabytes. These new memory cards are planned to be rugged, similar in size to the existing SD form-factor and have a lower power consumption and longer battery life – thanks to integrated power scaling. With the data speeds and power savings, I suspect we will see this new technology integrated as solid state drives (SSD’s) on laptops, smart phones, and other intelligent devices in sectors like medical and transportation. A projected production date for the new cards was not announced.

Making Videos While Stressing Less and Sleeping More

Once I have my subjects signed up and ready for the shoot, I like to make the most of the opportunity. I plan on at least 30 minutes to one hour on-site. I get as much footage as possible so that I can edit to my hearts content and maybe even get enough for TWO videos. If you have interesting subject matter and talent that feels comfortable in front of the camera, you may have a multi-part series. If your subject is comfortable and keeps on talking….keep on shooting. You never know what jewels you can come up with.

Schedule More Than One Subject Per Day
I find that when I am in my groove and setup for shooting, I can get alot done in one day. I try to schedule more than one subject per day. This allows me to focus on shooting when I’m shooting and editing when I’m editing. Same thing for creating the music in Garage Band.

Setup Private Viewing on YouTube
I upload my videos to YouTube but don’t let them go public until I am ready. Once they have been uploaded, I can take them public anytime I want. So if you want your video to go live on the 15th of the month, change your settings and go live on the 15th. It’s just that easy.

If you have questions or suggestions, please leave me a comment.

Next Time: Making Music in Garage Band

Getting the Best Possible Print from Your Fine Art Lab. Part 5 of 5

Getting to Know You!

Get to know the people who print your work.
A true fine-art class facility doesn’t just work for you, they work WITH you to get the print that satisfies your vision. Only you as the artist know exactly what you want in your print. Good communication skills can bridge a tremendous physical distance and result in a great print. Your master printer wants to know what you want in the print.

Testing is a critical step of this communication process.
Once a physical test has been printed, tangible suggestions can be made for changes. Get to know the lingo and the processes involved. The more you know, the more accuracy in your printer to artist communications and the less frustration has an opportunity to creep into your experiences.

Be open to hearing suggestions.
The printing technician is aware that this is your art. It’s your baby and your vision. The last thing they want to do is tread on that. Remember, they are here to print WITH you. The tech has likely printed countless thousands of fine art prints in their career and may have some truly outstanding suggestions that can elevate the print to unexpected regions. If you are willing to try their suggestions let them know that after seeing the results there is a possibility that you may want to go back to where you were. Then, if you don’t like the results, they will have been forwarned and thus prepared the files in such a way as to ensure a smooth transition back to the start.

You deserve a Great Print!
The countless hours spent by the artist from the time of exposure to the final print deserves to be rewarded. Hitting all the key points addressed in this series should bring the gift of an easier journey to a great print. If you partner your fine-tuned image file with a printer who understands how to elevate a file to a fine art print, your efforts will see even greater rewards. Sure you can still send your file to costco, or some mass production facility specializing in carnival prints, but where is the reward in that?

Getting the Best Possible Print from Your Fine Art Lab. Part 3 of 5

File optimizing and sweetening.

If done properly, this is an area in your work flow that can really make your image sing. Gross corrections in color and density should have been handled using Bibble as your raw converter. Fine tuning localized areas of the image such as burning and dodging can be handled in Photoshop or Gimp using curves with masks. For saturation adjustments, I prefer to use selective color over hue/sat, when I need to add more red to the reds, more blue to the blue, etc. I have found that using hue/sat is more likely to cause banding and other visible damage in the color channels.  Sharpening happens in several steps for me. First pass of sharpening happens in the raw conversion stage. I sharpen there, just enough to tighten up the pixels while avoiding halos and edge artifacts.  After sweetening the file in Photoshop or GIMP, I will scale a print ready file for output and sharpen according to the type of output. If I am just using unsharp mask, I prefer to sharpen using a high percentage – 400-500% with a low radius. 0.3-0.4 and a zero threshold. Else-wise, I will use a modified version of a hi-pass sharpening. I’ll cover that method in another post.

Once sharpened, I will convert to an output profile appropriate for the printer the file is to be imaged with. After this convert to profile step, I will carefully examine each of the three color channels for the presence of banding or other artifacts related to the profiling. If the artifacts are concerning to me, I will undo the convert to profile and print using the working color space. I ALWAYS test any file before printing large, and I recommend that others do the same if you are looking for the “best” print. Files submitted for printing in a large working space tend to need additional saturation – 12-18% for the first test. Then I will tweak the file a bit more based on the first test. If I had to make dramatic changes, then  a second test is warranted.

Share your thoughts and ideas by leaving a comment

Next from me: Getting closer to the final print: How much trust should you put in color profiles?

Getting the Best Possible Print from Your Fine Art Lab. Part 1 of 5

The end result of a great print is always the sum of it’s parts.

Every step along the way, from the click of the shutter through file preparation, all the way to print presentation choices, affect the visual appeal of the print. This author/artist believes that a fine art print does not lie strictly in the quality of composition and subject and use of light all brought together by the skill and talent of the artist, but also in a higher level of reproduction print quality.

Any factors that diminish the color fidelity and detail of an image, in my opinion, risk pushing the print away from fine art grade into Just Another Print. In other words, A fine image needs a fine print to qualify as fine art. Selling cheap, or poor prints as fine art is to me, analogous to selling posters as fine art.  The phrase “best possible” is a bit elusive, as “best” is often subjective. Meaning that you and I may have differing opinions of what an optimum print looks like. So knowing that the target may be moving subjectively, let’s look at what can be controlled to yield YOUR ideal of the perfect print.

Get the exposure right.

Proper exposure leads to the highest possible color fidelity with the greatest number of available levels of density. Under exposure leads to noise and grain in the image, while overexposure leads to loss of highlight information. Often we hear the cry of “I’ll just fix it in Photoshop!” While software offers us access to many tools that allow the user to attempt compensation for exposure issues, they will not fix the loss of fidelity or restore detail that is lost during improper exposure. The bulk of the density and color can be brought around from poor exposure to acceptable ranges, but the finer levels of information are lost forever. Use a quality calibrated hand-held meter or carefully watch your in-camera histograms to ensure your highlights, assuming your image is supposed to have them, fall below 100% white and you should be good to go.

Part 2: Is file format – tiff or jpeg –  important?

Leave me your comments. I would love to hear from you.

Learn about Tiff versus jpeg. Does Size Really Matter?

Is Bigger Always Better?

men on a very large bicycleYou are probably frustrated with the Tiff vs Jpeg debate. The truthful answer is not one of always use this, or never use that.  Like cars versus trucks, they each have attributes that make them well suited for certain tasks and not others. Often we are asked to describe the difference between tiff and jpeg files. While they share a few similarities, there are a few differences and particularly some characteristics in the Jpeg format that any individual looking to get the very best image quality should know.

A Tiff file (Tagged Image File Format) and a JPEG file (Joint Expert Photographic Group) are both raster file types. A raster is a grid, and raster images have their pixels (picture elements) arranged in a grid pattern – like a chess board with a large number of squares, with each square being assigned a color and density value. When the squares get small enough that our eyes cannot see them individually, they blend together to create the image.

Both file types contain what is called “Meta Data”. Meta originates with the Greek language and means beyond or above. So meta data is information that is above or beyond the “normal” data in the file. In this case, the data that forms the image. This meta data may contain image relevant information such as what color space the file is in, what embedded or assigned color profiles are of note, the actual file type – tiff or jpeg, image dimensions in pixels and inches/cm, a thumbnail preview and some pertinent info that software uses to rebuild our image file from the raw data. This meta data may also contain additional extended information that is not used to display the file, such as the type of device used to capture the image, i.e. what camera or scanner, exposure settings, flash settings, date, time and even GPS co-ordinates and copyright information if available. This list is not intended to be a complete technical description, but just enough info to give you a general idea.

JPEG files use a variable compression scheme to throw information away, thereby allowing the stored image file to require less file size. Jpeg compression is fairly intelligent. The software throws data away to save space, then the application that opens the file uses information embedded in the file to “rebuild” what the lost data might have looked like. The more data that gets discarded, the less there is for the software to base it’s rebuild on and we begin to see anomalies, or what are called “artifacts”. The authors of the JPEG standard knew that the human eye is far more sensitive to density information than it is to color. So color information sees the most loss of detail. Maintaining as much density information as possible here is key to keeping as much quality as possible. While this does effect color-detail, this process is nicer to look at than throwing out the density detail. Our eyes are less likely to see a smearing of the color than smearing of the detail. At higher levels of compression, more information is discarded, including more of the density detail, resulting in an image that looks blurry, or grainy. Some applications such as The GIMP – http://www.gimp.org/ – allow the user flexibility to increase compression in the color only, and leave the detail alone, thus allowing for a bigger bang for the compression buck. One of many nice GIMP features that Adobe could learn from.

Mid Level CompressionLow Quality-Maximum Compression

Max quality - Minimum Compression

 

 

 

Jpeg likes to work in 8 pixel by 8 pixel blocks and any one block has no idea what the next block contains. This can result in the borders of neighboring blocks failing to match for color and density. As levels of compression increase, these blocks become increasingly apparent to the viewer because the “rebuild engine” in the software has less original information to work with and therefor errors will be greater.

The tiff standard had it’s birth in the desktop publishing world as a proposed standard amongst desktop scanning devices. It is widely accepted as one of the image format defacto standards for printing and publishing. The other being EPS. Many consider tiff to by synonymous with uncompressed or lossless compression. This is a false assumption. While the baseline (basic level) of tiff is either uncompressed or uses a lossless line level compression, a tiff file can also be a “container” for a jpeg compressed file. This jpeg-in-a-tiff scenario is subject to all the loss and limitations of any other jpeg file. So be aware that a file with a .tiff extension may not have all the integrity you are expecting.

Tiff’s early days were very limiting. The format supported only 1 bit of data per pixel – meaning black or white. No gray and no color. Over the years the tiff standard has expanded to support ever increasing bit depths and files up to 4 gigs in size. Files over that size use a format called Big-Tiff.

Just in case this whole file comparison thing is not quite “geeky” enough for you, here is a fun fact; The third and fourth bytes in a tiff file alway represent the number 42, which is a nod to “The Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question” in “The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life.2C_the_Universe.2C_and_Everything_.2842.29

And they say programmers don’t have any fun.

The tiff standard has been expanded to include support for multiple “pages”. Just like a layered photoshop file. Adobe, who owns the rights to the tiff format, have taken advantage of this flexibility and allow layered photoshop files to be saved in the tiff container, alongside a “flattened” version of the file so that standard tiff reading applications can provide you with a usable composite image.

So I hear you asking: “Which one is best?” This of course depends on your needs. For general photographic and fine art pigment printing, file quality is a majority factor in the final print. Lossy compression means less than stellar printing. So use jpeg if you must, but compress it as little as possible. If you are using tiff, if you must compress, avoid using jpeg compression and go with line level compression. LZW for example.

Now if maximum quality is your biggest concern. Stop shooting JPEG in your camera, unless your raw files are compressed too. Many manufacturers only provide compressed raw.  Check your camera specs. If you aren’t gaining anything by shooting raw, then go for JPEG and save the space. If you have an uncompressed raw or a tiff option, these will yield the best file integrity but take the most room in storage.

If storage space is your primary concern, then jpeg is your friend, at least until camera makers are willing to include lossless compression in their firmware, and it is unlikely they will until there is a demand for it. So if you think it’s a good idea, write your manufacturer and request it.

Want more on shooting Raw vs Jpeg?  Check out my blog post on that topic here

Have a question? Put it in the comments below!

 

Getting the Best Possible Print from Your Fine Art Lab. Part 2 of 5

Is File Format Actually Important?

Last week in part 1, I wrote about a print being the total sum of all the parts in the workflow and how each part plays a role. We also touched on the importance of proper exposure for a good starting place. As promised, this week I expand the parts to cover gear and the common question of file formats.

Good gear.
If your lenses are of poor quality, don’t expect your images to be ready for fine art printing. Aberrations distortions and flares, like exposure, can only be somewhat compensated for, but not completely repaired in Photoshop. ANY distortion corrections in Photoshop means that your pixel data will be re-sampled. And re-sampled means it will be softened. Flairs, result in lowered contrast that equates to lessened detail, and repairing apo-chromatic errors requires re-sampling one or more channels. It’s preferred to handle this during raw conversion  but it still requires a re-averaging or re-sampling of pixel data.

File format.
For a fine art image, Unless jpeg artifacts are part of your style, (see my blog post on tiff versus jpg issues here) I recommend that the image be captured in an uncompressed raw format. Some camera manufacturers force users into either jpeg or compressed raw formats. For the wedding and portrait guys. This is usually fine. Their critical gamut for color lies mostly in the skin tone ranges of their subjects and the rest of the world is secondary. In a fine art print, the rest of the world is the artists domain and critical for color. JPEG compression throws color information away first at the higher quality levels, then moves on to also discarding density detail as the compression level increases. I have yet to see a digital camera that will hold the same level of color fidelity in the compressed file, that can be had in an uncompressed raw file. With the rapid pace of camera development, I imagine this issue will be corrected in a few years, if not sooner. I suppose we’ll just have to wait.

Do as much of your color correction, saturation work, density tuning and sharpening during the raw conversion process as you can.  Any resampling of color post-conversion can lead to lesser results when levels of density in each color channel are expanded, leaving gaps that cause rapid transitions in color, or compressed, causing a loss in color fidelity. Am I nit-picking here? Could be. But remember, the topic is getting the best possible print.  Nit-picking get’s you to that end. Shortcuts might get you an acceptable print, just not the best print possible.

File conversion.
The software used to convert your raw files can also go a long way to make or break your image.  For several years, I have been using Bibble Pro to convert my raw files. Side by side tests with current adobe products show that Bibble preserves more color fidelity and introduces virtually zero artifacts into my files. Adobe products appear to be using an interpolation scheme that sometimes creates zipper lines on hard edges and at other times, completely softens color detail in some of the channels.  When my distant Autumn aspen trees look like cotton candy in the red channel, missing all semblance of leaf detail, something is horribly wrong with the adobe raw converter.  Prior to final file work, I always convert my raw files to a tiff in a decently sized working space such as ProRGB or Adobe 1998. Especially for anything I will be printing on either photographically on the Lightjet or Pigment on watercolor or canvas.

Let me know your thoughts. I would love to hear your ideas.

Next from me: Sweetening the print through fine-tuning.

How big can I print my file?

Here is another great question we hear quite often. Sometimes more than once a day. So it seems low resolution file showing pixelsa relative bit of information to pass along here to our blog reader friends.

There are two valid answers to this, depending on whether we look at this as a relative issue or a subjective one. As a relative issue, we use math to compare number of file pixels versus output resolution. Subjectively we look at quality as simply a matter of personal taste – what I like to call “The quality to pain threshold”. Or how big can we go before the quality drops to where it becomes painful to look at or pay for.

First, in either point of view, image quality is more than just the number of pixels contained in the medium resolutionfile. For a simple example; a modern 24 mega-pixel file shot out-of-focus will be of lesser quality than a properly focused 4 mega-pixel file.

Let’s look at the relative approach first, since most folks like easy and firm answers, such as 2+2 always = 4, and George Washington was the first US prez.

The easy answer is achieved with simple math:

File pixel dimension ÷ minimum input resolution = output dimension.

Consider this:
The example camera has a pixel dimensions of 2000×3000 (6 mega-pixel)
and the example device wants a minimum of 300 ppi (pixel per inch) file resolution.Full resolution file uncropped

2000÷300 = 6.66″
3000÷300 = 10.00″
The largest maximum quality print size would be: 6.67″ x 10.0″

If your printer recommends a minimum of 150 ppi:

2000÷150 = 13.33″
3000÷150 = 20.00″
The largest minimum quality print size is 13.33″ x 20″

If your file is from a 24 mega-pixel camera with dimensions of 4000×6000:

4000÷150 = 26.66″
6000÷150 = 40.00″
The largest minimum quality print size would be 26.66″ x 40.00″

With the subjective approach, there are limited fixed answers. The size of output is usually limited by one or more of the following factors:

* The physical limitations of the printing device.
* Your budget.
* How ugly you are willing to accept it.

At some point the cost of the print will break your budget. That is a hard and fast limitation. So that’s easy – you can print as big as you want to go as long as you can afford the print.
The printing device or medium will support a maximum specific size. For instance, some ink jets will not print any larger than 40″ wide, but they will go several hundred inches long. You can’t go any larger unless you pick a different printing device or you print in multiple tiles and deal with matching the seams. If you are willing to do the latter, then your budget is again your limit.

The subjectivity comes in with your opinion. How big is too big before the quality drops below your level of acceptance – your threshold of pain. Or you might call it the “Yuck factor”. When you get to a level of enlargement that degrades the quality to a point where you don’t like the results, you have hit your threshold of pain. In essence, you see the print and say “Yuck! That’s one ugly print and I’m not willing to pay money for it”

What does the yuck point look like? I can’t answer that for you, only you can. My level of acceptability may be different than yours. A professional’s need for quality is likely higher than that of the average consumer due to experience and training. Because of this experience, the professional will usually hit his/her level of pain sooner than the consumer.

Digital Photographs: Lost but not Forgotten

I just can’t help it when I see articles about lost photographs. I feel the urge to expose someone Balancing act with street performerselse’s pain on to everyone and anyone who cares to listen. Last week I wrote about saving your memories (photo albums) from a natural disaster like the fires in Boulder Canyon here in Colorado. People have been rescuing their photos for many years by grabbing their “photo albums” and running for safety.

I personally have not read about anyone grabbing their computer, CD’s or whatever they have their digital photo’s on and running out of the house. It’s probably happened somewhere and I would hope people would consider their digital images to be just as valuable as their printed photo albums. Then again, we are in the digital age where people share their photos on face book and cellphones and never even consider a print as a way to show off an image.

Consider this story I read in the Denver Post just this week. A staff writer misplaced her cellphone one morning on the way to work. Was it forgotten at the gas station, left under a pile of stuff in the car or misplaced at home somewhere? Either way by the end of the article it still was not found. Several things run through a persons head when their cell phone goes missing like what about all the information I have stored in there? It’s not only a hassle to replace but time and expense too, at least for what you can replace.

This writer mentioned being distraught over several photos taken with the MIA phone that could not be replaced. Maybe not life changing images but something deemed worthy of taking and saving in the first place. The fact that so many cell phones are lost, broken or destroyed every day that contain photographs that will never see the light of day again makes me pucker, at least a little bit but probably not as much as the person that lost them but it’s still not a pleasant experience. So what’s the moral of the story here? No moral, just an observation from me about how photography has become such a disposable act anymore. People shoot like crazy because it’s fun to record images of events and people’s lives they are part of. The sad thing is that when a new cell phone/camera model comes out those images are usually not saved. As I have been told by more teens and twenty-somethings than I care to remember, “it’s no big deal, we’ll just shoot more!” I hope they all have really good photographic memories because that’s all they may have in the future.

Digital Image Archiving – The Lost Generation Part 2

So far, all the digital archiving solutions we discussed in part 1 have their pro’s and con’s. Mostly con’s. What’s left? How about a good old fashioned print! If you make a good quality print, note I said ‘quality’ print, not a cheapo inkjet that will fade faster than American Idol winners, you can be good to go with just a simple shoe box to hold all your precious memories. OK, so maybe not a real shoe box although I’m willing to bet my New Balance sneaker box full of prints will outlast any of the digital storage solutions currently available. Did you know you can buy, cheaply I might add, photo storage boxes in all variety of sizes? Most are made of archival acid free paper, have dividers and give you (or your decendants) access to actually see them whenever you want with no batteries required. How about an album? There’s nothing like a good photo album to thumb through. That tactile quality can never be replaced.

I was recently at a family reunion being held in a local park. One of the Aunt’s brought a stack of photo albums which consisted mainly of old photos of past family members and deceased pets. People were grabbing them left and right to look through the pages, laugh at their relatives and ask over and over “who this that with so and so”? It really draws a crowd and certainly helped those present feel much more connected to the family. Then I noticed a few digital cameras floating around, people taking snaps, a few videos and a lot of chimping. If you have not heard of chimping, it’s the process of looking at your photos on the camera typically right after shooting them. So called because if you really look at someone doing it they really do look like a chimpanzee all hunched over and staring with wonder at the tiny magic screen. Anyway, back to the family chimps. What I noticed is that the photo albums stopped right around when the digital age hit. There were a few awful ink jet prints made by Auntie so and so but not many. According to them, most of their recent photos were either on their computer somewhere or still in the camera. Hmmm.

Now I am not suggesting you print every shot you take, although from a lab’s perspective that would be pretty cool. Just print the important stuff. The photo’s you want to pass on to future generations, the photo’s you want to be remembered for. I also suggest you don’t hide them in the attic or basement. Leave one or two albums laying around, see what happens when family or friends come over. Bet someone picks one up and starts going through it. Makes for great conversation and reminiscing over those good times you all shared. Sure beats having everyone huddle (think chimp) around a laptop or I-pad, if that would even happen. Whatever you do, just print it, put it in an album, in a box, even in a pile but just print it. The only true way to archive your photographs and for the future all of mankind!

You will still want to keep your digital ‘originals’ somewhere but if you only share them on Facebook, flickr, e-mail’s and what-not, understand that these are all very short term options. The sooner you start thinking about a long term archiving solution the easier it’s gong to be.

Tell us what you think and what you are doing to preserve your memories. Here is a resource for archiving digital files, mostly for professionals but really it applies to anyone who shoots digital photographs and does not want to be part of the lost generation.
http://dpbestflow.org/data-storage-hardware/storage-hardware-overview