Glass, Paper, Pixels

We photographers are allowing our standards to slip. Let me explain:

Where do your pictures end up? Are they printed on paper, or prepared for showing on the web? 

If you plan to show your 16 megapixel pictures on the web, you need to reduce the image to (say) 800 x 600 pixels like the example below. Downsizing an image will blur it slightly. This blurring process removes most of the noise and leaves the picture looking cleaner. Now you can apply a tiny amount of sharpening to put the original punch back into it. I use my own sharpening filter that features on my web site.

The result should be nice looking images that please the eye when presented on a computer monitor*. There's no excuse for a poor image when it's been dealt with in this way. 



But what happens if you want to show this as a nice big print. From recent experience a 35 x 20 inch panorama print requires around ten thousand pixels across its width, and so you need to up size your file. This reveals all the faults in the picture.

So, close examination of the picture above revealed a tiny amount of camera shake. This is not visible when the picture is miniaturised for the web, the picture looks fine. However it will look awful when enlarged and sharpened. 

Therefore the picture above is a reject and has already been deleted. Standards my friends, standards....

*I mean a nice crisp clean monitor. Not some sort of tablet thing with greasy fingerprints all over the touch screen.

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