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I was wondering what you guys use to photograph and edit your windstone pictures. I have a nice digital camera and the pictures look great when I take them, but when I shrink them down to a managable size for the website they get all grainy and lose a lot of detail. I have tried zooming out some on my camera so I just have to crop the image but I still lose detail and the image looks a lot more blurry than when I started. So, I was wondering about what methods you guys use, some of the pictures on here turn out crystal clear and I was wondering how :~ If anyone has any suggestions it would be appreciated!
Opal, you should be able to set the dimensions of your photos on your digital camera. I have a Sony DSC 120 that I got in 2008 and it has the ability to change the image size-you can set it to a “web setting” so the pictures are small, or as large as 16 inches on one side for larger prints. I had a setup near a Window and in front of a painting I have in my bedroom that I used as a background, but that meant I had a small window of time each day to take pictures. Now I have a white pillow case on a chair lit by a standard snake-necked desk lamp that sits on my computer chair so I can easily swivel it to get direct or indirect light. It works pretty well for me 🙂
Hmm. What program are you using to shrink your images? I usually crop some of mine off too, and then shrink them, since they start out about 2000+ pixels wide. It’s only natural to lose some detail since you’re shrinking the image, but they shouldn’t get a LOT more blurry…you might need to check to see if the program you are using is compressing the file when you save (usually as a jpg) after editing. I have mine set to the lowest compression, highest quality. If you change it to highest compression (which gives you a smaller file size), the quality is horrible; it looks like a bunch of colored blocks. I think the default is somewhere in the middle.
I don’t know where this option is at in all programs, but in Paint Shop Pro 7, which is what I use to edit and shrink mine…when I go to save the edited version and the small window pops up that shows me where I can save it to, under the “Save”, “Cancel” and “Help” buttons on that window is a fourth, that says “Options”. Clicking that brings up the image quality settings.
Oh! I just thought of another trick. What I’d do when I was making icons-and this would work for larger images too as long as you’re putting them on the web-open the desired image in photoshop. Shrink it to the appropriate size and then take a screen shot of it. Then paste the screen shot into photoshop and crop everything but the image. It works fantastically!
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