Image Editing

Bob Parrish · Apr 10, 2002

I have an Oly 2100 UZI and have two questions relative to saving and editing images.

I use a card reader to get the images into PSE. My first question is should I first save each image (that I might want to print) as a TIFF file? Then do I work in PSE with the TIFF file to enhance it before printing?

My overall question (as the above may not be terribly clear!) is how should I save my images from the card reader so that I give myself the best chance of getting a very good print(8x10)? I also have Qimage Pro.

Thank you for your help.

JerryLP · Apr 10, 2002

Bob Parrish said:
I have an Oly 2100 UZI and have two questions relative to saving
and editing images.

I use a card reader to get the images into PSE. My first question
is should I first save each image (that I might want to print) as a
TIFF file? Then do I work in PSE with the TIFF file to enhance it
before printing?

My overall question (as the above may not be terribly clear!) is
how should I save my images from the card reader so that I give
myself the best chance of getting a very good print(8x10)? I also
have Qimage Pro.

Thank you for your help.

Bob:

I suppose for the absolute highest quality, what you mentioned sounds best. But I routinely load and save as jpg, process in Qimage (only), and print in Qimage (on an Epson 870), and I think my 8 x 10's look great! You may want to try this yourself, and judge for yourself, prior to commiting to saving in the "3+ times memory space required" TIFF format.

Jerry

Inigo Montoya · Apr 10, 2002

Bob,

Copy the images directly from the card reader to your hard drive. They will be JPG, but they're the ORIGINAL ones as compressed by the camera. These are now your master "negatives" don't make any changes to them - always work with copies.

Opening in PSE directly from the card and re-saving as JPG as you described will begin the degradation cycle of multiple opens/saves when using JPG compression. In addition, you will have lost the original out of the camera image if you do any manipulation before making that save.

To maintain maximum quality after editing, save in photoshop's native PSD format, or if you have no layers, TIFF (with optional lossless LZW compression to save space).

Bob Parrish said:
I have an Oly 2100 UZI and have two questions relative to saving
and editing images.

I use a card reader to get the images into PSE. My first question
is should I first save each image (that I might want to print) as a
TIFF file? Then do I work in PSE with the TIFF file to enhance it
before printing?

My overall question (as the above may not be terribly clear!) is
how should I save my images from the card reader so that I give
myself the best chance of getting a very good print(8x10)? I also
have Qimage Pro.

Thank you for your help.

dmlove · Apr 10, 2002

Inigo, I'm trying to do this the right way. I have a couple of questions about your advice. To get the pictures from the camera to my hard drive, I've been batch renaming them using Irfanview. Is that "wrong"? Second, when I open an original jpg in PSE, I immediately do a "save as" psd and that's what I work on. Is that okay?

Davia

Pieter80420 · Apr 10, 2002

1) First I do a direct copy from the SM card to my Hard drive (using card reader and explorer). These are my master files. I immediately change the attributes of these files to "read-only". This helps any accidental re-saving of the files. As soon as I have about 600MB of these, I burn them on a CD.

2) I direct copy (explorer) the files that I want to work on, to a "working folder" and change the attribute to "not read only". I save this working file in the image editor's native format (PSD for Photoshop).

3) When finished with an image, I save it ino a "final images" folder, in the native format. I use layers a lot and can always go back and just tweak something on these, without having to start all over.

4) For publishing to the web, I normally downsize the image to 800 X 600 and save as jpg with 25% compression, in a seperate folder "for web". This gives a reasonable file size (60-120kb), while still have almost no visible artifacting at 1:1 viewing.

When I rename files to add some description of it, I keep the original image number as part of the description, so I can always easily get back to the original if necessary.

This sound very complex, but it is actually very simple (and fast) to do. The biggest problem is self-dissipline to keep up with it at all times.

Spannie--Spannie

dmlove · Apr 10, 2002

Spannie, how does one do a "direct copy" using Explorer?

Inigo Montoya · Apr 10, 2002

I wasn't aware that IrfanView's rename function could perform copy operations. I usually just open my reader with Windows Explorer, select all (Ctrl-A), copy (Ctrl-C), then navigate to where I want to put them and paste (Ctrl-V). Other times I'll open two windows select all (Ctrl-A) and then just drag and drop.

Doing a save as PSD immediately will produce a good working copy of your original.

dmlove said:
Inigo, I'm trying to do this the right way. I have a couple of
questions about your advice. To get the pictures from the camera
to my hard drive, I've been batch renaming them using Irfanview.
Is that "wrong"? Second, when I open an original jpg in PSE, I
immediately do a "save as" psd and that's what I work on. Is that
okay?

Davia

Inigo Montoya · Apr 10, 2002

Pretty good process, except I'd worry about the last part of step 1. That leaves you open to losing 600 images should your hard drive fail before you burn that CD. What I do instead is I don't erase my SM cards until the files are both on my HD and on CD. If I've only shot 100MB worth of new images but I want to erase the cards, I'll burn a CD with those 100MB and the most recent other 550MB worth of images. This gives me added "insurance" as most (if not all) images eventually end up on multiple CDs.

Spannie said:
1) First I do a direct copy from the SM card to my Hard drive
(using card reader and explorer). These are my master files. I
immediately change the attributes of these files to "read-only".
This helps any accidental re-saving of the files. As soon as I have
about 600MB of these, I burn them on a CD.

2) I direct copy (explorer) the files that I want to work on, to a
"working folder" and change the attribute to "not read only". I
save this working file in the image editor's native format (PSD for
Photoshop).

3) When finished with an image, I save it ino a "final images"
folder, in the native format. I use layers a lot and can always go
back and just tweak something on these, without having to start all
over.

4) For publishing to the web, I normally downsize the image to 800
X 600 and save as jpg with 25% compression, in a seperate folder
"for web". This gives a reasonable file size (60-120kb), while
still have almost no visible artifacting at 1:1 viewing.

When I rename files to add some description of it, I keep the
original image number as part of the description, so I can always
easily get back to the original if necessary.

This sound very complex, but it is actually very simple (and fast)
to do. The biggest problem is self-dissipline to keep up with it at
all times.

Spannie
--
Spannie

Roxie Killian · Apr 10, 2002

Spannie said:
1) First I do a direct copy from the SM card to my Hard drive
(using card reader and explorer). These are my master files. I
immediately change the attributes of these files to "read-only".
This helps any accidental re-saving of the files. As soon as I have
about 600MB of these, I burn them on a CD.

I really like your system and have done something similar. I have used a zip drive up til now and am going to get a CD burner. What software do you use for burning the CD's. Also do you burn CD-R's or CD-RW's. The CD thing is all new to me, so excuse my ignorance.--KenD-460Z, C-3030Z, C-2100UZ. )

Pieter80420 · Apr 10, 2002

dmlove said:
Spannie, how does one do a "direct copy" using Explorer?

I have a card reader that shows up in explorer as a removable drive. I simply select the files in this directory; right-click; copy. Go to the directory on my hard drive that I want to put them in; right-click; paste.

I don't delete the files from the smartmedia until I have verified (and opened) everyone with an image editor.

Spannie
--Spannie

Pieter80420 · Apr 10, 2002

Inigo Montoya said:
Pretty good process, except I'd worry about the last part of step
1. That leaves you open to losing 600 images should your hard
drive fail before you burn that CD. What I do instead is I don't
erase my SM cards until the files are both on my HD and on CD. If
I've only shot 100MB worth of new images but I want to erase the
cards, I'll burn a CD with those 100MB and the most recent other 550MB worth of images. This gives me added "insurance" as most (if
not all) images eventually end up on multiple CDs.

Well, I've had that same sinking feeling about a week ago when my PC didn't want to boot up!!! I have since started to burn the images to a CD-RW disk when I copy them to the hard drive. I forgot to include this step in my previous post. I only have one 128MB smartmedia, so I can't keep them until the 600MB is full. I hope to be there someday though, but I have some other "very necessary" items to get for my hobby ;^)

--Spannie

Pieter80420 · Apr 10, 2002

Ken Killian said:
I really like your system and have done something similar. I have
used a zip drive up til now and am going to get a CD burner. What
software do you use for burning the CD's. Also do you burn CD-R's
or CD-RW's. The CD thing is all new to me, so excuse my ignorance.
--
Ken
D-460Z, C-3030Z, C-2100UZ
. )

Ken,

I actually use both. I forgot to mention a step in the above post, though. After copying the files to my hard disk, I burn them onto a CD-RW. This has the advantage that I can add to it multiple times. When I've collected about 600MB, I burn them to a CD-R, and delete them from the CD-RW.

I use Adaptec Easy CD-creator for burning the CD-R's and directCD to burn onto the CD-RW.

Spannie
--Spannie

dmlove · Apr 10, 2002

I use Nero 5.5. Whatever burner you get will probably come with one or the other. Burning jpgs is a breeze.

dmlove · Apr 10, 2002

I should add, when you look for a burner, I got a cheap one at Best Buy (Buslink brand, called "Lite-On") Mine is 16x and I think I paid $79. Works great (makes a whirring sound, but that's the only negative). Came with Nero, so I didn't even have to buy software.

JohnEE · Apr 10, 2002

All sound advice except there's no need to use CDRW - with Nero or Adaptec it's easy to add sessions to a CDR until it's full as long as your drive supports multi-session discs. Most modern ones do.

Inigo Montoya · Apr 10, 2002

I've had spotty results with DirectCD on rewritablles myself. And because it looks just like another drive to the system, should a virus come along that wants to modify or delete all JPGs you're still out of luck backup-wise. Multiple sessions on a CD-R sounds like a better plan for incremental backup. You lose some free space with each session, but then a DirectCD formatted blank only has around 525MB free anyway.

JohnEE said:
All sound advice except there's no need to use CDRW - with Nero or
Adaptec it's easy to add sessions to a CDR until it's full as long
as your drive supports multi-session discs. Most modern ones do.

jim kelly · Apr 10, 2002

I agree with JohnEE and Inigo's comments,

I use CDR's in my CDRW drive and keep copying to it until it is full.

After a photo session I take my full smartmedia card/s and put one into my usb card reader and rename the file ( ie: 10apr02a, 10apr02b) and then copy it straight to cd. I repeat this for all the full smartmedia cards I have for that days shoot. I don't reformat my cards until I am confident that they have all been copied to cd successfully. Then I open my pics on CD in Irfanview as thumbs to decide which I will edit in my image editor - I mostly sharpen, brighten & resize to 600x450 for the internet - saving to another file with namimg sequentially ( ie; track001.jpg, track002.jpg )

http://www.pbase.com/jimkelly

Tom Vickers · Apr 10, 2002

What I like best is to edit files to correct them then save them on hard drive. When set is ready to backup, I would burn them on CDR using Adaptec's Easy CD Creator and I can add up sets until CD is full. Tom

Jim Kelly said:
I agree with JohnEE and Inigo's comments,

I use CDR's in my CDRW drive and keep copying to it until it is full.

After a photo session I take my full smartmedia card/s and put one
into my usb card reader and rename the file ( ie: 10apr02a,
10apr02b) and then copy it straight to cd. I repeat this for all
the full smartmedia cards I have for that days shoot. I don't
reformat my cards until I am confident that they have all been
copied to cd successfully. Then I open my pics on CD in Irfanview
as thumbs to decide which I will edit in my image editor - I mostly
sharpen, brighten & resize to 600x450 for the internet - saving to
another file with namimg sequentially ( ie; track001.jpg,
track002.jpg )

http://www.pbase.com/jimkelly

Bob Parrish · Apr 11, 2002

Tom Vickers said:
Jim Kelly said:

I agree with JohnEE and Inigo's comments,

I use CDR's in my CDRW drive and keep copying to it until it is full.

After a photo session I take my full smartmedia card/s and put one
into my usb card reader and rename the file ( ie: 10apr02a,
10apr02b) and then copy it straight to cd. I repeat this for all
the full smartmedia cards I have for that days shoot. I don't
reformat my cards until I am confident that they have all been
copied to cd successfully. Then I open my pics on CD in Irfanview

Click to expand...

Thanks to all of you for your advice!

Tom Vickers said:
Tom Vickers said:

as thumbs to decide which I will edit in my image editor - I mostly
sharpen, brighten & resize to 600x450 for the internet - saving to
another file with namimg sequentially ( ie; track001.jpg,
track002.jpg )

http://www.pbase.com/jimkelly

Click to expand...

Image Editing

Member

Leading Member

Forum Pro

Senior Member

Well-known member

Senior Member

Forum Pro

Forum Pro

Leading Member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Senior Member

Senior Member

Member

Forum Pro

jim kelly

Guest

Well-known member

Member

Keyboard shortcuts