Crisp and sharp pics.

[chris mabbott]

FINALLY at the main photo folder 😮 I have chosen 7 photos in a batch, this is simple as you hold down the CONTROL KEY whilst clicking on each photo you want to select. MAKE SURE that you keep holding down the CTRL key until your selection is complete.

Because I don’t want to keep these pics on my pod, taking up too much space, I select CUT to transfer them to my Hampden file folder on the PC.

I find CUT is easier for me, than DRAG, because sometimes the files I drag, end up somewhere else, CUT & PASTE is cleaner.

[chris mabbott]

I’ve navigated to my HAMPDEN FOLDER and will now PASTE the 7 pics inside..

Again, my apologies for the screen shots, they aren’t intended for clarity, just illustration

[chris mabbott]

Now they are PASTED into their new folder ready for editing..

[chris mabbott]

So now for my first victim, which will be the first pic I took 😆

I double click the photo from the Hampden folder so that it will open up in my default photo editing program, which is Photoshop Elements.

I cannot say enough good things about this program. There is a learning curve to it, but once you learn the basics..FANTASTIC. Plus there are tons of free tutorials on YouTube..

[chris mabbott]

Here we can see the actual dimensions in inches of the photo, which is very large, 26×26, but I’ll explain why I do it this way..

[chris mabbott]

Here is the first photo that is in the example shown above. You’ll notice now that it is smaller than the original, I have re-sized it for comfortable viewing over the forum and for a full view.

Most of you have cruised ebay and have seen the terrible photos the sellers use. Some of them are so large that they completely fill all the screen, plus.
This is where correct sizing for the application comes into play. The photos I show here are approx.. 8×6 inches..

[chris mabbott]

The above photo has been sized correctly for an “overall” view, we aren’t interested in showing any close up details here, just the big picture, said with tongue in cheek

Remember, this is a MOBILE CAMERA shot, the lens is only tiny, but by using the basic rules of

Correct light
Focus
STEADINESS
Positioning

We have an entirely acceptable and detailed photo that we can use to illustrate, show off our new piece, or to sell online.
Keep in mind that we are also shooting a target, the dial face, through a reflective surface, so it will never be perfect.

[chris mabbott]

When I first open up an image in Photoshop Elements (PSE) we are initially confronted with a seemingly endless and confusing array of options HUH 😮

But for our purpose, I’ll show you the basic quick way to improve your shots, and this is where PSE smart function comes in handy.
Most editing software grossly over compensates your exposure, PSE has a smart function that reads the light and data, then corrects the pic slightly, so it isn’t too much.
We’ve all seen those pics where the colors are so bright, you have to wear shades. PSE will not do this. But if this is a preference, then you can do that manually, over expose your colors that is.

Here I am using Auto Smart Fix option..

[chris mabbott]

The photo of the face above is the result of auto smart fix, which is just enough to repair any slight errors of light, color and sharpness..

So now we have corrected our image, but it is still very large for our use, posting on the web, forum, or to our files.
You are asking why we took such a large image, the answer is…… detailed close ups.

Lets say that we want to show a close up of the second hand/dial and the tiny writing on the face. Instead of struggling, trying to get a close macro shot, we can use our large image to ZOOM into an area in PSE, then we simply crop the area we don”t want.

I won’t go into cropping yet though..

So here in this example, we have zoomed in on our area of interest and cropped out/removed the unwanted part, which made up about 75% of our original large photo..

This is handy for the forums, where you want to show a specific small area, or for selling on ebay…

Please keep in mind that this image was taken with a mobile camera, WITHOUT a macro, from a distance of about 5-7 inches away.

[chris mabbott]

For my purpose, this would be a highly acceptable photo that shows good detail, you can plainly see the lettering and the hairline crack, condition of hands etc…

Remember that this WAS NOT a close up shot, this was cropped from our large 26×26 image… which I’ll post again.

This is another reason why STEADINESS is soooo important. If there had been any shake, the image would have been blurred on the close up.

Think of blur in the terms of holding a long fishing rod, a tiny shake at your hand, will become a large shake at the end of the rod as it travels the distance..

[chris mabbott]

Notice the light on the close up shot of the second dial. I have the light above and behind me slightly. You can see on the edge that the lower part is illuminated while the upper part is shaded, we have down cast light, which for our reflective surface seems to NOT pick up any glare.

I always think of holding a flashlight under my chin and how that light alters the look of the face, as does light from above or the side..

Play around with natural outdoor light, always in the shade for our shiny little targets..

[chris mabbott]

So, we’ve used our LARGE file to inspect our photo, to crop out any areas that we want to use for close up detailed shots, so now what?

This is one of the things I love about PSE, it gives you the ability to not only re-size your photos, like many programs do, but it also lets you save them for the web AND to preview them in a browser window before you commit to the save. It also allows you to set the dPi and the actual size in megabytes. This option is very handy if you post photos on a website that restricts your upload file size to, lets say… 50Kb per image.

Sound complicated? Well it isn’t and here is how you can do it in about 20 seconds or less..

You remember our original image size was 26×26 inches. First, we need to reduce that file size to something we know that is viewable on a web page without having to scroll around. I chose around 7×5, just enough that you don’t have to squint to see the image.

First you select RESIZE IMAGE from the pulldown menu and here we see our original file size of 26×26.

I’ll change the to 7×5, I always change the largest value, here I’ll replace 26.889 with 7. The program automatically adjusts the other value so you don’t have to worry about making you image look long or stretched. It keeps it in perspective.

[chris mabbott]

Now we have our new and more manageable photo file, ready for the next step…

[chris mabbott]

Oops, I made an error when I said 7×5, correction, 8×8 +/_ 🙄

Now we want to save it AND prepare it for our posting on…. this forum for example. We don’t want to bog down Bob’s server with our HUGE images 😆

We now have a smaller file dimension, also the size in MB is smaller. But we want to make that MB size smaller still, without physically altering the photo size.

This is done in PSE “Save For Web” function..
In PSE you can save in many different ways/formats etc but I use the web format to simply save space because I have thousands of photos, and they eat your memory.

In this example we want to reduce the MB size but still keep the physical 8×8 aspect.
There is a slight payment in quality for this gift, but remember, the internet only displays images at 72 dots per inch, so really, it isn’t an issue for us as our images are, hopefully crisp and clear

From the FILE menu, we select… SAVE FOR WEB

[chris mabbott]

We are then faced with this window.. once again, please excuse the poor quality, I was shooting directly from the screen.

I used the close up crop of the second dial for this pic. Here we see what we are presented with upon choosing…FILE… SAVE FOR WEB.

The photo on the left is the original as we resized and enhanced it, at its new size of 8×8

The photo on the right shows how the reduction in memory size will affect its quality once saved.. simple and nice

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