At the risk of becoming repetitive, it’s about those photos again. The percentage of photos being received for publication but which we cannot use has increased substantially. The problem is the same: photos which have been saved as compressed. I can only suspect that some programmes have compression as a default setting for saving photos.
Fairfax Media Computer specialist Hayden Walles explains it thus:
“There are many different techniques for crunching data down so that it takes up less space on the computer’s memory. Each suited to a different situation. For things like photos audio and video the ‘Lossy’ system is used.
Lossy compression achieves its gains mainly by throwing away – ‘losing’ – some of the information. It is used in situations where it is possible to sacrifice some quality by throwing away details most people won’t even miss.”
In reality the colour of many of the pixels have been wiped off. This may be fine for viewing photos on a screen or copying from an inkjet printer. However such photos are no longer have enough definition to be used in newspaper reproduction.
It is simple to check if a photo is suitable before sending it off. When a photo is chosen the data value is displayed on the screen. To be reproducible this number must be a minimum of 1,000K (preferably more) – a high definition photo will typically be around 3,000K. Compressed photos will typically be less than 100K.
Different programmes show the data in different ways but the definition value numbers will always be there. The illustration is of three such displays (a) and (b) are not suitable photos, (c) will be fine.
To ensure suitable photos either send straight from the camera or use photos which have been saved straight to a file without compression.
Thanks Mike
