Digital Photos (was: Reno Suite...)

There was a comment on the "was" thread about .jpg being an inferior format
to a couple of other formats. So if my Kodak 1.3Mp camera only downloads in
..jpg, how do I fool it into downloading in some other uncompressed format?

According to the camera specifications, the actual file format is listed as:
"Exif version 2.1 (JPEG base).

Suggestions other than borrowing Gail's very expensive Canon for my magazine
shots?

Jim

if your digital camera downloads to jpg.. as does mine.. the only way to
convert it is after download using a photo editing program that supports
multiple formats.. I use Paint Shop Pro

BT

"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
There was a comment on the "was" thread about .jpg being an inferior
format to a couple of other formats. So if my Kodak 1.3Mp camera only
downloads in .jpg, how do I fool it into downloading in some other
uncompressed format?

According to the camera specifications, the actual file format is listed
as: "Exif version 2.1 (JPEG base).

Suggestions other than borrowing Gail's very expensive Canon for my
magazine shots?

Jim

RST Engineering wrote:

There was a comment on the "was" thread about .jpg being an inferior format
to a couple of other formats. So if my Kodak 1.3Mp camera only downloads in
.jpg, how do I fool it into downloading in some other uncompressed format?

Jpeg is the preferred format for photos that are going to be displayed for view
(for example, the shots we submit to Jay of our aircraft should be jpegs). Gifs
are preferred for shots that people are likly to just glance at (for example,
thumbnails) because they typically are smaller than jpegs and consequently load
faster. This is not always the case, however; typically, the busier the photo
is, the less advantage gif has over jpeg, and a gif of a complicated color photo
may be larger than a jpeg of the same shot.

The main problem you will have is that, once you have a photo in a compressed
format, any attempt to edit it will reduce the quality of the shot and almost
certainly drastically increase its size. If you're shooting for a web site,
download your file from the camera the size and quality you want and never touch
it again.

Many digital cameras will download in a "raw" format. Unfortunately, many of
these formats are proprietary to the camera manufacturer and you have to use
their software to manipulate it. The "bmp" format is pretty universal and can be
easily edited by most photo programs.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...
Jpeg is the preferred format for photos that are going to be displayed for
view
(for example, the shots we submit to Jay of our aircraft should be jpegs).
Gifs
are preferred for shots that people are likly to just glance at (for
example,
thumbnails) because they typically are smaller than jpegs and consequently
load
faster.

IMHO, you have this exactly backwards.

Generally, a GIF (or PNG or compressed TIF, for that matter) file will be
larger than a JPEG file, for the same image. GIF is a non-lossy compression
format, and doesn't have the luxury that JPEG has of throwing information
away to make the file smaller.

In the case of computer-generated images or natural images that have few
variations (scanned B&W document that has been "posterized", for example),
GIF can come out ahead with a smaller size and more importantly, will not
lose any detail the way a JPEG will. But this is the exception to the rule,
and doesn't apply to photographic images.

Generally speaking, if you have a GIF image and a JPEG image the same size
(in pixels) and the GIF image is smaller, it's either because the JPEG
compression was set to the minimum value, or because the JPEG version has
24-bit color while the GIF has only 8-bit color (which obviously results in
a 2/3 reduction in file size even before any compression has taken place).
The color-depth difference is, in particular, a very common reason one might
be fooled into thinking JPEG is not as efficient as GIF, since when
compression a color photographic image, that difference will almost always
exist.

Pete

"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
There was a comment on the "was" thread about .jpg being an inferior
format to a couple of other formats. So if my Kodak 1.3Mp camera only
downloads in .jpg, how do I fool it into downloading in some other
uncompressed format?

Depends on the camera. But I wouldn't be surprised if a 1.3Mp camera simply
does not provide any other format. Kodak's original digital cameras had a
proprietary format option, but it was compressed as well, and any
proprietary format requires conversion software to change the data into
something you can actually use. (EXIF is simply a header format used with
JPEG images to allow the camera to store information about how the picture
was taken...it's not an image format itself).

For a consumer-grade camera, as long as you set the JPEG format to the
highest resolution, lowest-compression setting, you should fine. You'd be
unlikely to notice any difference between the raw image and the compressed
one. Any of the professional-grade digital SLRs should have an option for
saving the data in a "raw" format (which typically is actually just a
proprietary, non-lossy compressed format). One of Canon's higher-end models
actually can have two memory cards installed and allows you to save each
picture twice, JPEG to one memory card and their raw format in the other.

All that said, you don't seem to have correctly understood the comments in
the other thread. JPEG is NOT an inferior format for photographs. It's
designed to remove information (enhancing compressability), without
sacrificing what the human eye sees. At higher compression levels, it
certainly can look like crap, but at the low compression levels used by
digital cameras, it's just fine for most people and most purposes.

The comparison you read was specifically looking at computer-generated
line-art images, which JPEG compression can make unreadable, especially at
the higher compression settings. But that doesn't mean JPEG is inherently a
bad format. It just means that you can achieve similar compression ratios
without sacrificing quality by using a non-lossy format like GIF or PNG
(computer generated images have more "regular" data, and so compress better
without throwing away information...they are "information sparse" in the
first place).

Suggestions other than borrowing Gail's very expensive Canon for my
magazine shots?

Well, 1.8Mp sure sucks for publication, but it wouldn't take a high-priced
camera to fix that. There are several good 5Mp cameras on the market,
priced at $500 and lower, that would do a great job. They emit JPEG images
too, but they will be high enough resolution, and low enough compression
that they should reprint just fine.

Pete




According to the camera specifications, the actual file format is listed
as: "Exif version 2.1 (JPEG base).


Jim

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

For a consumer-grade camera, as long as you set the JPEG format to the
highest resolution, lowest-compression setting, you should fine. You'd be
unlikely to notice any difference between the raw image and the compressed
one. Any of the professional-grade digital SLRs should have an option for
saving the data in a "raw" format (which typically is actually just a
proprietary, non-lossy compressed format). One of Canon's higher-end
models
actually can have two memory cards installed and allows you to save each
picture twice, JPEG to one memory card and their raw format in the other.

Several cameras do that. My Nikon D70 even does that and it saves both files
to the same card.

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

For a consumer-grade camera, as long as you set the JPEG format to the
highest resolution, lowest-compression setting, you should fine. You'd be
unlikely to notice any difference between the raw image and the compressed
one. Any of the professional-grade digital SLRs should have an option for
saving the data in a "raw" format (which typically is actually just a
proprietary, non-lossy compressed format).

Actually, most RAW files are compressed somewhat, too. Read the instruction
manual.

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
[...] Any of the professional-grade digital SLRs should have an option
for
saving the data in a "raw" format (which typically is actually just a
proprietary, non-lossy compressed format).

Actually, most RAW files are compressed somewhat, too. Read the
instruction
manual.

I said they were compressed. You even quoted the part of my post where I
said that. Something wrong with your hearing aid?

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"C J Campbell" wrote in message
...
[...] Any of the professional-grade digital SLRs should have an option
for
saving the data in a "raw" format (which typically is actually just a
proprietary, non-lossy compressed format).

Actually, most RAW files are compressed somewhat, too. Read the
instruction
manual.

I said they were compressed. You even quoted the part of my post where I
said that. Something wrong with your hearing aid?

What? Dang. I knew I had to get thing checked.

C J Campbell opined

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

For a consumer-grade camera, as long as you set the JPEG format to the
highest resolution, lowest-compression setting, you should fine. You'd be
unlikely to notice any difference between the raw image and the compressed
one. Any of the professional-grade digital SLRs should have an option for
saving the data in a "raw" format (which typically is actually just a
proprietary, non-lossy compressed format).

Actually, most RAW files are compressed somewhat, too. Read the instruction
manual.

But do they do lossey compression? If they don't that compression doesn't
matter.



-ash
Cthulhu in 2005!
Why wait for nature?