Archive for the ‘Hints & Tips’ Category
Why DPI Does Matter
March 4th, 2010
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
I was pointed to a couple of blog postings yesterday, one called The Myth of DPI and the other titled Why DPI Does Not Matter.
Their arguments are logical and faultless. Their reasoning is sound. The message they are trying to get across is correct. But they are both wrong.
So why are they wrong?
Because they are writing about images on the web, and mentioning DPI. When you set the image size and resolution in Adobe Photoshop you never have the option of choosing the DPI of an image. This is what you get if you choose inches as your preferred units:
and this is what you get if you choose metric:
The option you have is of choosing “pixels/inch” or “pixels/cm”. Not “dots/inch” or “dots/cm”. Adobe Photoshop is concerned about your digital file. It doesn’t give a monkeys what you intend to do with it later. So it offers you ppi, NOT dpi, which is used in printing terminology. 300 pixels per inch equals 118.11 pixels per centimetre.
Our earnest bloggers are absolutely right in that ppi is irrelevant when you’re showing images on a screen. But dpi is relevant when you print those images, because then you can figure out how large you can print the image before those annoying little pixellations get in the way and become visible. 300 dots per inch is generally enough for the human eye to be tricked into seeing continous tone.
fotoLibra has always demanded that images uploaded to its site should be 300 ppi, for two perfectly valid reasons — and one utterly compelling one. You can read about them here.
I agree with my friends Ben Gremillion and Svein Wisnaes that resolution counts for nothing on the web. So it generally doesn’t matter, until you come to selling your photographs. When you are selling photographs to book publishers who need to print them at 300 dots per inch, it’s common courtesy to supply them at 300 pixels per inch.
Otherwise they might buy them from someone who took the trouble to go the extra step.
BOMBSHELL
July 24th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
I recommend anyone joining fotoLibra to read the Great Expectations blog posting to find out more about the exciting community they are joining.
Ben Shipley posted a comment which I said I’d answer in a new posting. Now David Carton has reminded me that I haven’t answered it, so here goes. First, Ben’s original comment:
It would be nice if the list view showed lightbox adds as well as views (at present the only way to get this info is to try to delete the photo).
Also, after working with other libraries, I am not sure what “views” means – did the photo show up among 1,000 others, or did someone actually bring up the full-size preview? And is that “someone” a valid customer or does it also include fellow members?
The best thing about fotolibra for my money is the way you all try to keep members informed – you seem like a very cool bunch of souls in general – but one can never get too much clarity, especially when it comes to what is selling out there.
Along same lines, I am curious where you see yourselves in the photo universe – what niches you aim for, where you saw this going when you started, where you see it headed today, where you fit into the whole amateur/professional photography experience, not just commercial stock. We get hints from Jacqui, but clarity definitely breeds patience.
Right. The first request is a simple feature enhancement. We already gather this information; the problem is figuring out to feed it to you in a neat, uncluttered, intelligible way. The data feed you currently get has nine columns; adding a tenth is going to make it uglier. We will work this out. It may involve having to drop down through layers of data.
‘Views’ (I answered this) means Thumbnails that have been clicked on to create Previews. The people who click could be either buyers or sellers; if they’re not logged in we don’t know who they are.
We always enjoy compliments. Thank you for that one.
OK, here’s the big one. In our photo universe, we’re not Getty Images, Corbis or Alamy. We’re much smaller, much more flexible, faster and much more personal. Buyers deal directly with the owners of the company, not a nominated ‘account handler’. Some people love this, others actually prefer anonymity and disengagement. When did you last speak to someone from Amazon, Adobe, Google, Microsoft or Apple? But you probably give them your money.
In Britain there are over 600 picture libraries. 440 of us are serious enough about the business to pay an annual subscription of about £500 to BAPLA. In terms of visitors to our web site, we come eighth. So we’re in the top 2%, and we only started 5 years ago. But we still need to do better.
Our major market is book publishing. It’s a market we know and feel comfortable with. We don’t reach ad agencies and design groups as we should. We sell to calendar and greetings card publishers. We don’t do much in the way of celebrities, news or sport.
We started with the intention of providing access to family albums, shoe boxes, the fading photographs in Granny’s attic. But we were swamped by the digital revolution.
HERE’S THE BOMBSHELL. We still want those pictures, so now we’ve decided to do something about it.
Alongside the existing Member, Pro Member and Platinum Member accounts, we are creating a completely new membership category.
It’s going to be called HERITAGE MEMBER. It is completely FREE, and it gives you UNLIMITED storage.
WOW!! I hear you shout. What’s the catch?
The photographs must have been taken before January 1st 1980. They must adhere to our Submission Guidelines.
And that’s it.
Membership will run in tandem with your existing fotoLibra membership. Full details will come with the formal announcement. We hope to have this in place by the beginning of September.
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Pilots of light aircraft are passionate about flying. In clubs all over the country you’ll find private pilots just longing for a reason to take to the air. And the passenger seat of a Cessna or other high-winged aircraft is perfect for aerial photography … you can even open the window to avoid the plexiglas blur you get in most low-winged craft.
So, one sunny morning when it’s not too blustery, take yourself off to a flying club near to the landmark, view or whatever else you fancy shooting from the air and start chatting up the friendly pilots in the clubhouse. And before long, as long as you have a head for heights and a calm disposition, you’ll be up with the birds.
— posted by Yvonne Seeley
Great Expectations
April 29th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
On Monday we received a cancellation notice from a member. He had joined fotoLibra in February, uploaded five images of sunsets, and quit because he hadn’t sold any in nearly three months. It didn’t cost him anything, but he quit all the same.
Do we raise people’s expectations too high? We don’t promise the earth. fotoLibra was never a Get Rich Quick scheme. It was always a Get Slightly Better Off Over A Long Period Of Time operation, although Von wouldn’t let me use that as a slogan for the company. Nor would she … oh, I’ll leave that till later.
What’s a reasonable expectation? The most famous example is a guy who heard about fotoLibra on a Wednesday, uploaded a single picture on Thursday, we sold it to an ad agency the following Tuesday and 30 days later he received a cheque for £1,100 / €1,228 / $1,619. OK, that’s happened once. But it can happen. On the other hand it is possible to be a fotoLibra member for years and never sell an image. But for the great majority of members, once the upload number passes 250, fotoLibra provides a small but steady income.
The big bugbear, which we have yet to figure out a way around, is the etiolated delay between uploading a picture to a Picture Call and getting paid. Here’s the process, and if anyone has ideas on how the workflow can be improved, we’d like to hear them.
1. Picture researchers send us a list of images they want and when they want them.
2. Jacqui Norman sends out a Picture Call to our members, along with a deadline on the same day the researcher wants to see lightboxes.
3. We prepare anything up to 10 lightboxes per Picture Call, working at high speed to get the images on to the researcher’s desktop the day she wants to see them.
4. She makes a selection and shows them to her client (an editor, an advertiser, whoever). This could take anything up to 3 months, and it’s out of our hands.
5. The client makes a decision. This may take another three months. It is not final, but the researcher comes back to fotoLibra and downloads the hi-res images. We still do not know if the images are going to be used.
6. The book — let’s say it’s a book — is written, edited, designed, made ready for the printers. This takes at least 6 months.
7. The book goes to press, and we are sent a list of the photographs used and which we can invoice for.
8. 10 minutes later the invoice is sent out from our offices.
9. With a few very honorable exceptions (step forward, John Wiley & Sons, and receive the fotoLibra Plaudit) we get payment between 90 and 120 days after our invoice.
10. Once the money has been received, only THEN can we assure our members that a sale has been made. We pay everyone within 30 days of net sales receipts.
A simple addition will show that this process can take anything up to 18 months, with our member not knowing a thing about failing or being successful until 30 days before he receives his money.
It’s not good. But we can’t see a way round it. We can’t say a picture has been sold before we receive the money, because it hasn’t. We can and sometimes do say it’s been optioned, if it’s to a rock solid client like John Wiley & Sons.
Customers who buy off the site with a credit card are a different matter. That’s always a nice surprise to the member, when a cheque arrives with no warning. That can be 30 days after the picture’s uploaded.
All this is simply to warn new members that this is a long, drawn-out journey. So don’t join and take your images down a few weeks later. Let them mature. After all, we are a picture library, and items shouldn’t disappear from a library.
Shots of Redemption
April 3rd, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
We’ve just released Version 4.5 of the fotoLibra Submission Guidelines, which detail precisely the requirements we need from images uploaded to fotoLibra.
You can download the regular lo-res version from here, but if you would prefer the hi-res version and don’t object to a 2.4 MB file, download the fotoLibra Submission Guidelines HQ version here.
Whichever you choose, you’ll probably be fast asleep before you reach page 15, so as it’s quite useful to bear these thoughts in mind when you next pick up a camera I’ve reproduced that page here.
GWYN HEADLEY’S SHOTS OF REDEMPTION
•• The following tips from fotoLibra’s founder apply to the majority of photographic situations, but were written mainly with outdoor photography in mind. He makes no claim to be a photographer himself, but he does know what sells.
•• Portrait (vertical) images outsell landscape images by about 60:40.
•• Photograph people’s fronts, not their backs.
•• Most books and magazines are portrait in orientation, and buyers and designers often like to see large blank areas (sky, sea, fields) where headlines and copy can be dropped in.
•• Jigsaws demand the opposite; lots of colour, lots of detail, all in sharp focus.
•• If you see a wonderful photo opportunity, take it in both landscape and portrait formats.
•• Interesting skies are important.
•• If you can get back to the location, take it in spring, summer, autumn and winter, snow and sun, dawn and dusk, mist and fog, rain and shine, storm and stress.
•• Use a tripod wherever possible.
•• When using digital, always shoot in RAW and convert to JPEG later.
•• Make sure your horizons are level and your sea doesn’t slope.
•• For those who are trained in perspective control or are experienced with rising front cameras, converging verticals can be corrected in a photo manipulation program such as Adobe Photoshop or Irfanview.
•• If you have uploaded a large collection (over 200 images) covering a particular subject, please tell fotoLibra about it.
•• Make use of reflections in water, even in wet roads and pavements.
•• Look carefully around and beyond the subject of your photograph, especially at the edges of the frame, and check what’s intruding into your shot.
•• Take photographs in the early morning and late evening, not at noon.
•• When the light is flat with few shadows, photograph details which need low contrast, such as inscriptions, carvings, etc.
•• Please do not upload photographs of sunsets. They do not sell. Scenes shot during sunsets are fine, but not when the sunset is the subject of the image.
•• Exceptions prove the rule.
•• Every picture must tell a story.
•• Take your time.
Three hundred pixels per inch
March 12th, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
300 ppi. That’s the resolution we demand for images uploaded to fotoLibra.
Lots of people say 300 dpi instead of 300 ppi. That’s dots per inch, which is what printers use, but digital images appear on digital screens, which use pixels. So we say 300 ppi.
As soon as you know a little bit about digital photograpy, you will learn that the resolution of an image makes not a blind bit of difference to the quality or size of the image. The majority of cameras deliver their digital images at 72 ppi, whether you choose the RAW or the Basic mode.
Why then is fotoLibra so cussed as to insist members go through the palaver of converting their images from the perfectly adequate 72 ppi to 300 ppi?
We do so for two perfectly valid reasons. And one utterly compelling one.
Firstly, I’ll answer the question our poor Support team has to fend off more than any other — How do I convert my images to 300 ppi?
It’s a doddle. You can probably do it with the software that comes with your camera, but as they all differ I’ll describe the process in Adobe Photoshop. Don’t have Photoshop? Try Adobe Elements. Don’t have Elements? Irfanview is free and does the same thing, and much more besides. If you have a digital camera and you intend to sell photographs through fotoLibra, then you must have image processing software. It’s your darkroom.
This is what you do in Photoshop: go to Image> Image Size> UNCHECK the Resample Image button, and change the Resolution to 300 pixels / inch. Save the image. If you go to File> Automate> Batch… you can easily apply this to all your images.
That’s it.
If you see 118.1 instead of 300, you’ve chosen pixels per centimetre instead of pixels per inch. It’s exactly the same.
We don’t often reveal the first two reasons why we impose a resolution of 300 ppi (no more, no less), because when we do we usually manage to upset both buyers and sellers. This doesn’t apply to YOU, of course. So apologies in advance.
- Our buyers, who in the vast majority of cases will be printing the images they buy at 300 dots per inch, do not care for the extra work involved in carrying out this operation, and they complain when they get an old 72 ppi image which they have to convert. So we like to supply them with the resolution they prefer.
- It makes members think before uploading the moment they snap an image, and to look carefully at their photographs to see how they can be improved, and if they are uploading truly saleable pictures.
I know you know all this, and I know your images are always 300 ppi and you’ve never had any problems uploading, but spare a thought for a few of your fellow members in difficulty. I hope this helps to explain things.
In the background I can still hear whispers. “It’s really not relevant. Why make such a song and dance about it?”
OK, here’s the cruncher.
Have you ever discovered porn on fotoLibra?
No?
Yet it’s the world’s first Open Access image library. Anyone can upload anything.
Why is there no porn? Because 99.9% of it falls at the first barrier. What self-respecting porn merchant is going to go through the admittedly very minor hassle of converting his 72 ppi images (which are only ever viewed on a screen) into 300 ppi so he can upload them to fotoLibra? He’s going to go somewhere less stringent, less careful. Somewhere he can harvest mugs. He won’t find them on fotoLibra.
We also check every image uploaded. One or two may get past the 300 ppi barrier; they won’t get past our picture vetters.
Since the first upload to fotoLibra in March 2004, we have only had to reject four images.
We must be doing something right.
And that’s why we ask for this tiny imposition on your time.
Compression
March 5th, 2009On January 21st we started (gradually) to convert all the TIFFs on fotoLibra to top quality (Photoshop Level 12) JPEGs.
This will save about a terabyte of space with our current number of images, and provide far more room for members to upload photographs. All buyers seem to prefer JPEGs nowadays. Long gone are the days when the 24 MB TIFF was the only path to salvation.
The big debate we had in-house was how much compression should we apply? We want to preserve of much of the original image as commercially possible. Rumour has it that one very major picture library saves its JPEGs at Level 8, which is 60%.
We are more perfectionist. I was against anything less than Level 12, which holds between 90% and 96% of the original data. This will reduce a 24 MB TIFF to an 8 MB JPEG, a substantial saving. It is impossible to detect a visual difference on a computer screen. We settled on 94%.
JPEGs work well where there are large areas of the same colour, such as the sky. To put it as simply as possible, a TIFF file of a photograph of blue sky would read as follows:
- blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel, blue pixel,
whereas the JPEG file of the same image would read
- blue pixel x 24
Which as you can see is much more concise. Hence it’s smaller.
Here’s an image shown as a TIFF, then at Level 12, Level 11 and Level 10 JPEG compression:
Frankly, I can’t really tell the difference. Only when compression gets down to Level 7 can a difference be detected.
Worries about the degradation of the JPEG image through repeated copying are unfounded because the original upload is always used as the source asset for image sales. The purchaser will always be getting a Level 12 JPEG.
Why camera makers never adopted the much more sophisticated JPEG2000 standard I’ll never know.
Of course, any Pro or Platinum members who have uploaded TIFFs to fotoLibra and who do not want them converted to JPEGs only have to tell us and their uploads will remain untouched. Only one so far.
Drag ‘n’ Drop Upload Checker
February 3rd, 2009
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
It’s our job at fotoLibra to make uploading as easy and painless as possible for our members.
It’s our job at fotoLibra to make sure the images we sell are print repro quality, ready to go without endless expensive manipulation by the purchaser.
How do we reconcile these two sometimes opposing forces? By publishing our Submission Guidelines, and enforcing strict parameters on uploaded image files. If we say we want 300 ppi, we won’t accept 200 ppi or 400 ppi. If we say we want 8 bit, we won’t accept 16 bit. if we say we want a minimum width or height of 1750 pixels, we won’t accept 1700 pixels.
Tough but fair.
The snag is, how can we tell if your images won’t made the grade until you upload them?
And that can take hours.
So what happens is that a member collects his images together, does what he can to ensure they meet our specifications, then drags them across to the fotoLibra DND (Drag And Drop) window. An hour or so later he gets the message “Image is 1514px high. Minimum height is 1750px.”
The upload has been rejected.
How annoying is that? I know I would throw something at the screen and storm off in a sulk. Yet we couldn’t figure out a way round it. How could we tell what members’ images were like BEFORE they were uploaded to us?
“We can’t, so let’s ask the members to do it.”
“But we do, and they don’t always do it. Then they get annoyed. With us.”
“So make them do it.”
“Yes, but how?”
“Make the pre flight check part of the upload process.”
THAT’S IT!
If we build a piece of software that reads an image file and checks that
- it’s 300 ppi
- it’s a top quality uncompressed JPEG
- it’s 8 bit
- its shorter side is longer than 1750 pixels
- it’s between 1 MB and 100 MB in file size
then it can report any errors back to the member before all that time is spent uploading a file which will be rejected.
So that’s what we’ve done. We’ve built it for Windows Vista and XP, for Intel and PowerPC Macs running OS X, and for Linux. We’ve built it into the forthcoming fotoLibra DND v3, so all you will have to do is to drag the files you want to upload into the DND window. The app will check your images and tell you what’s hot and what’s not.
Then you can upload safe in the knowledge you won’t get those nasty unfriendly error messages after a failed upload.
Is this a dream? A fantasy? Or simply vaporware?
No. It’s here, it works (I’m using it right now on an Intel Mac running OS 10.5.6) and we’re testing it at the moment. When we’re confident it’s bug free, we’ll release it.
Jacqui will tell you when it’s available for you to download. It should be in the next couple of weeks.
We haven’t yet got the resources of a Microsoft or an Apple, so we don’t have the facilities to test to exhaustion. But we think it will work well.
And if by chance it doesn’t, no doubt you will tell us.
High resolution
September 26th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
fotoLibra demands that all images uploaded to the site have a resolution of 300 pixels per inch.
Now we all know that the resolution of an image is irrelevant and unimportant; whatever it is, it’s the same image. Absolutely right.
But when you look at an image Preview in fotoLibra, we show you the print dimensions of the image in inches and millimetres. That’s the reprographic size, printing in CMYK.
We use a sum to show you this, dividing the given pixel dimensions by 300. If the image is 72 ppi or 2400 ppi, the result of the sum will be wrong. And buyers (who all want 300 ppi) will get confused.
When TIFFs are uploaded to the site, we convert them to 300 ppi automatically. We can’t do the same for JPEGs because the process would involve resaving the image, and as a JPEG loses quality the more often it’s saved, we need to avoid that.
One or two members have had their uploads rejected because the image had a resolution of 0 ppi. We thought that was tough even by fotoLibra’s notoriously rigid standards, and asked to see the images. So in they came and they both returned a res of 72 ppi.
It’s Photoshop. It doesn’t always agree with what the camera thinks it’s done. Here are three examples of the same open and untouched photograph, simply showing the different metadata Photoshop displays about the image.
Here you can clearly see in the EXIF data that the image has a resolution of 0ppi. They are lying to you.
This is the standard window for Photoshop to display the image’s resolution. It’s 72 ppi.
And here Photoshop is showing us the camera data. Well, well, well, it’s 300 ppi.
So what is right and which is right and what is right for you and fotoLibra?
Well, upload TIFFs and the problem disappears.
Strip the EXIF data from the image and the problem disappears.
Accept a ragbag of resolutions and the problem disappears — but so do the clients.
Martin Evening in his impressive work ‘Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers’ writes “There is a common misconception in the design industry that everything must be supplied at 300 ppi. This crops up all the time when you are contacting clients to ask what resolution you should supply your image files at. Somehow the idea has got around the industry that everything from a picture in a newspaper to a 48-sheet poster must be reproduced from a 300 ppi file. It does not always hurt to supply your files at a higher resolution than is necessary, but it can get quite ridiculous when you are asked to supply a 370 MB file in order to produce a 30″x36″ print!”
In ‘Real World Photoshop CS3’ the perennially readable David Blatner notes “The key to making resolution work for you is knowing how many pixels you need for an image’s intended output.”
fotoLibra believes in supplying what the client wants from the outset. If they want 300 ppi, they shall have 300 ppi. And we don’t accept files over 100 MB anyway!
How to get fast Support from fotoLibra
March 11th, 2008
by Gwyn Headley
Managing Director
Simple — PLEASE STATE YOUR MEMBER ID FOR ALL SUPPORT QUERIES.
You’ll find it under the “My Details” tab in your Control Centre.