[dewy]

Well it seems to bme just showing people pictures in 'stock' straign form camera size and with out borders etc is not so 'professional' so does any one have any tips for selecting sizes to reduce images to, cropping and different border styles?

[shuttertalk]

I'd recommend keeping your images at the highest resolution possible so that you can crop more and retain more detail.

ln terms of reducing size, I would only do so for web pages and emailing... I usually go no large than 640×480 or at most 800x 600 because the average screen size can only fit so much.

for print and or screen viewing, I wouldn't reduce at all because the software will do it automatically- just make sure to Keep 4:3 ratio for screen and 3:2 for print.

Borders... forget polka dots etc, I think most professional would be either a thin black border, or thick white borders, like they do for prints. I've seen some thumbnails that look like a 35mm filmstrip or a 35mm slide - they're pretty cool too.

[peter]

mmm i love my white borders...
how do black borders look tho ? .. i dont think ive come across those b4 in film processing ... interesting ...

what sort of software do you have for reducing photos to 4:3 ratio ? ... i guess cropping would be the easiest way ... dont like cutting off bits of photos tho ...

[dewy]

Yeah, I am keeping all my originals, I was just wondering so I can make copies to upload here and show off =). And reducing file size is the only way i found to reduce the file weight (size in filespace) which won't reduce quality? Any thips for that?

[shuttertalk]

Hm... not really... trial and error? I use the image editor which comes with Office 2003 and there's an function for resizing for the web...

[adam]

you can alway make a larger image smaller, but to make a small image larger will not have good results.
JPEGS are lossy, so every time you save it, you lose quality.

[dewy]

Shuttertalk, I do not use Office, so yeah, i seems to be getting good compression with the Save as for web in Photoshop 7, still working on Gimp =), Can't wait for the day, or if tehre is some one tell me please, for cameras that nativelly support PNG =)

[peter]

hrm.. i use Macromedia Fireworks.. its got pretty good optimisation ..
windows XP also has a image resizing tool .. that you downnload from the windows website.. its one of the XP powertoys

[adam]

I find the image resizing powertoy useful for quickly resizing images to show people, very easy,just highlight all those you want resized and click resize and it does it all, but then, I find that the jpeg quality of the pictures is quite low, which contributes to a small filesize; but is good enough to show people, in a small picture, what's happening or what is being taken;

I'm hungry.