Cropping, Resizing & Saving

[WestLothian]

I was wondering what other digital photographers do when keeping their collection of favourite images.

Earlier this year I had about 100 photos printed at 6"x4" and put them in a large, traditional album. This got me into the habit of cropping to 4x6 or 6x4 to avoid difficulty with the printer (accidentally cropping off beaks etc.).

I then found that resizing to 1200x800 and sharpening at this final size made a much better printed 6"x4" image than leaving the file large. It also made the files smaller and nicer to browse through on the PC.

What do you do with your collections, do you also keep the camera original files?

[Ambriel]

For the most part I keep my photos 'as taken' on the PC, only cropping or sizing when I'm going to be printing one out for presentation or putting on the net.

[WestLothian]

Some pictures don't suit the original camera crop or the 6x4 aspect....

[WestLothian]

Other pictures demand 6x4.

[jennyb]

Originally Posted by WestLothian

I was wondering what other digital photographers do when keeping their collection of favourite images.

Earlier this year I had about 100 photos printed at 6"x4" and put them in a large, traditional album. This got me into the habit of cropping to 4x6 or 6x4 to avoid difficulty with the printer (accidentally cropping off beaks etc.).

I then found that resizing to 1200x800 and sharpening at this final size made a much better printed 6"x4" image than leaving the file large. It also made the files smaller and nicer to browse through on the PC.

What do you do with your collections, do you also keep the camera original files?

I am interested in the replies to this thread, because I have been scratching my head recently wondering what to do about the many thousands of photos I have taken over the last couple of years.

Yes, many of them have gone on my web site, but many - quite good ones - are still languishing in the bowels of my hard drive. There is a limit to how many you can hang on the wall! So, the printed album idea is a good one.

However, I don't know whether it is just me not understanding these things, but surely if you crop to 1200x800 you are going to lose so much resolution? I thought with print it was the more pixels the better.

Yes, I keep all the originals and only mess with copies.

Jenny

[agrumpycow]

I have an 80GB external hard drive where, at the end of each month, I send the photos I have taken that month which I want to keep. They are organised and sorted into species, type etc.
I am not keen on keeping them on my PC because I lost a lot of very important and personal photos a couple of years back when my computer crashed.
I tend not to print photos unless they are to be framed or if they are really important to me as an extra back up.

[WestLothian]

You are right, cropping or resizing to 1200x800 does lose a lot of information and also a lot of noise.

The resize with "bicubic sharper" sampling in Abobe for example, will take the original information and build an image that will appear crisper on screen and when printed. Modern printers can print up to ten times finer than this if the file has the available resolution.

I asked a few of the printers what resolution to use to get the best sharpening for on-paper appearance. The answer appears to be that it depends on the image and the printer. I noticed that the higher resolution colour prints can start to appear "muddy" when compared to some at 200-300dpi; while with greyscale the higher the resolution the better the image.

[richardkm]

I save all my images direct from the camera to an external hard drive, backed up to another external hard drive. The first is permanently connected to the PC and all images are sourced from there. The second drive is connected only when I want to do a backup. This way I always have the originals. Any manipulated images are saved on my PC and written to DVD grouped together with other images for the same project.

[Paul mabbott]

Originally Posted by jennyb

However, I don't know whether it is just me not understanding these things, but surely if you crop to 1200x800 you are going to lose so much resolution? I thought with print it was the more pixels the better.
Jenny

Are you talking about 'cropping' or 'resizing'? Cropping will give you a smaller picture but with the same dots per unit area (i.e. same resolution) whereas resizing will reduce your dots per unit area - reducing definition ....

[kshotton45]

I use a 400Gb External Hard Drive. Holiday snaps get backed up on a CD. Wildlife ‘Keepers’ get backed up on a DVD when I have enough to fill one.
Eventually I shall get another External Hard Drive as a backup. I shall choose one by another manufacturer, to reduce the chance of an inherent fault showing up in years to come. The odds of the same fault in two different models should be pretty remote.
CD’s and DVD’s are a bit of a pain, but if a Hard Drive fails there’s a lot of images to be lost. Even CD’s and DVD’s may have a limited life. So I back up on a regular basis and always have copies on two different media or locations.
One tip I’d like to pass on via this thread, is the need to have a regular DELETING session! Don’t let the ‘half decent’ shots accumulate. Those ‘interesting’ shots with motion blur are probably just that – blurred! Delete them. A bird pic with it’s back to you may be pretty but it has to go. If it has it’s head in the bird feeder delete it!
Those plant/flower/fungi/insect reference photos – just how many of the same shot do you need to keep? Keep a good selection – the rest must go!
Remember , if you shoot RAW , those files are HUGE !, keep them under control.
One final thought if you store on a Hard Drive, get your directory structure sorted , then you won’t have to ‘trawl’ through thousands of images to find that pin sharp image to shot at the local duck pond!

Keith