Newsletter BirdLife Southern Queensland Photography Volume 2 Number 1 January 2013 Editorial Group: Newsletter Editor Tom Oliver Assist. Editors Peter Crane Peter Tierney BirdLife Southern Queensland Photography Convenor: Tom Oliver In this edition: Latest News Improving your Image Tom Oliver Resizing and Cropping your Image Rob Parker Editor s Notes (and links to further information) Email: tomoliver@optusnet.com.au Latest News Welcome to the 2013 new look BirdLife Southern Queensland Photography Branch newsletter. I hope that the holiday period went well and recent bushfires haven t impacted too dramatically on members. Peter Crane and Peter Tierney are now assisting with production of the newsletter and also providing a range and depth of ideas and topics which will move our Photography Branch forward. In this edition we have, by popular request, re-introduced the original Image for Critique forum and have renamed it Improving your Image. So, to start the year off, Peter Crane has provided a delightful image of a Black-fronted Dotterel for post processing and comments. A good quality JPEG can also be provided to those members wishing to process the image on their computer. The article Resizing and Cropping your Image, written by Rob Parker, is an easy guide on how to prepare your images for uploading to a web site. Rob is editor of the BirdLife Photography Special Interest Group (SIG) newsletter and is also on the IT sub-committee. If you intend to post your bird images onto the SIG web site, members will find this article very helpful. Following the successful Digital Bird Photography in the Bush Workshop at Crows Nest, we re hoping a similar event can be offered to members during the coming winter months, so watch this space.
Improving your Image Tom Oliver This Black-fronted Dotterel image was submitted by Peter Crane. Peter works in Gosford, NSW, returning to Queensland every two weeks and the weekends he s in NSW, he checks the Eremaea web site to determine a suitable birding spot to visit. Peter noticed that a Banded Lapwing had been reported at Cornwallis Rd, Richmond Lowlands and decided to visit, because he d yet to see one. He actually ended up at Pughs Lagoon, which is mentioned in Where to find Birds in Australia by John Bransbury. Peter took this image sitting on the ground and supporting the camera and lens on his knees. Technical Details The camera and lens used was a Canon 1D Mark IV Body and Canon EF 400mm f/4 DO IS USM Lens with a Sigma APO 2x EV Tele Converter. This gave the lens a focal length of 800 mm and Aperture Priority (Av) was used. The image format was JPEG, Aperture f/8.0, Shutter Speed 1/8000 sec, ISO 2500. Photo by Peter Crane A JPEG (2.31 MB) of Peter s Black-fronted Dotterel is available, on request, to members wishing to have a go at post processing the image. Please email your critique suggestions (in the order the actions were applied in post processing); and image requests to: Tom Oliver (Convenor, BirdLife Southern Queensland Photography Branch) Email: tomoliver@optusnet.com.au The most helpful and relevant suggestions, plus an amended image, will appear in the next newsletter. 2
Resizing and Cropping your Image Rob Parker In this article, I ll show you a quick and easy method of resizing images for submission to the Photo Galleries on the web-site. I know this is confusing for some, as several people I ve spoken with have expressed some frustration at being unable to do this easily. A couple of years ago, this newsletter presented an article on this subject; hopefully, this approach will be easier to use. I m using Photoshop Elements as my image editor; the technique will also work in the full version of Photoshop, and is also likely to work in other image editing software if you re using something else, give it a try. The key to this method is to use the Crop tool even if you don t want to crop the image! When the Crop tool is selected, the options bar (at the top of the screen, below the menu bar) changes to show various options available for the Crop tool. By default, when first opened, the crop options are all empty, as shown here: What Not To Do If you select a portion of your image with the crop tool without setting any options, the cropped portion will be the size of the crop box but this is not displayed anywhere, so it s difficult to crop/resize to an exact size. If you re trying to produce an image which will not exceed the limits for submission to a web gallery (maximum 1024 pixels wide, 768 pixels high), you must guesstimate whether the cropped area will be below those limits and the subject must fit within that area! Here s an example, where I have a small bird, in an image 3456 pixels x 2304 pixels, which I estimate will crop to a suitable size: Tip: To display the image size in pixels, use the Edit Preferences menu to set the Units for Rulers to pixels.
After committing this crop operation, I find that the image is OK for width, but is too tall (the image size is now 1055 pixels x 874 pixels): I could Undo the crop operation (Ctrl+Z is a useful keyboard shortcut) and try again, but it s unlikely that I ll get the height correct without losing some of the subject and, as I mentioned above, this will certainly not work when the subject fills most of the original image. The key to using the Crop tool to resize to an exact size is to use the options bar to set what you want. How To Resize To An Exact Size Let s assume that I want to resize my image to exactly meet the web gallery requirements i.e. to produce an image of 1024 x 768 pixels. This is an image aspect ratio of 4:3, so enter 4 inches in the Width box in the options bar (you need to enter the units, if you ve changed the Rulers units to pixels), and 3 inches in the Height box; enter a Resolution of 256 pixels per inch, to force the crop tool to produce an area of 1024 (4 x 256) x 768 (3 x 256) pixels. Note that when you enter values into these boxes, the Aspect Ratio changes to Custom. The options bar will look like this: The Crop tool will now be constrained to a 4:3 sized box and I can select the exact area of the image I want: 4
After committing the crop operation (and changing the View to Fit on Screen, via the Ctrl+0 shortcut key), here s my resized image: If you ve looked closely at the screen-capture shots, you ll have noticed that I m working with a raw image file (.CR2 file extension). The final step is to Save As..., selecting JPEG as the file type, and if necessary setting the Quality option to ensure that the file size is less than the 500KB limit for submission to a web gallery. Important: The Preview checkbox must be selected in order to see the file size. Resizing Without Cropping At the start of this article, I said that the Crop tool can be used to resize without cropping. Here s an example, where I wish to resize an image to 768 pixels high, and retain its original (3:2) aspect ratio. I make the following entries in the option bar:
I then select the whole image with the crop tool, commit the crop operation and my image is resized without cropping: Resizing Artefacts Resizing via the Crop tool or any other method will change the amount of information in the image. Generally, resizing via the crop tool will reduce the amount of information, and the resized image will be generated using the default Resampling method for the program in Photoshop Elements, it is a Bicubic algorithm (other choices are available, via the dialog box accessed via the Image Resize Image Size menu selection). However, if the crop area of the original image is smaller than the size of the resized area, the resizing algorithm will generate additional pixels to fill in the gaps. In mild cases increasing the size of an area by, say, 10% - the effect on the image will probably not be visible, but in extreme cases, this will lead to visible artefacts in the image and a severe degradation of image quality. Here s an example: Selecting Use Photo Ratio in the option bar gives the width, height and resolution settings of the original image: An extreme crop, selecting just the bird s head, will resize with a very large magnification: 6
These two images show the effect of the additional pixels added during the resizing. They are both shown at 100% magnification: Conclusion Using the Crop tool, with custom settings in the option bar, is a very quick and easy method of resizing images. In addition to using it regularly for resizing images for submission to the web galleries, I use it to generate 6 x4 jpg images of my travel photos, to print at a photo kiosk (usually OfficeWorks, just a short stroll up the street from home, cheap and good quality) for placing in an album. I set the Width and Height to 6 and 4 (and use the toggle arrows between those boxes if I m changing between portrait and landscape mode), set the Resolution to 300 pixels per inch sufficient for high-quality prints and just crop each image as I want, often to the full original image size. It s so easy!!!
Editor s Notes (and links to further information) This new look newsletter will be available bimonthly and I know that the new editorial team will ensure that articles presented are current and relevant to meet the needs of bird photographers. I would encourage members to have a go at post processing Peter Crane s Dotterel image, because I m sure you will learn something from the exercise. Please let me know if you wish to submit an image in one of the future Improving your Image forums. The following links will provide further information on image resizing: http://photographylife.com/how-to-properly-resize-images-in-photoshop http://photonaturalist.net/how-to-resize-your-photos-the-sharp-way/ http://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/save-for-web-cs5/ Copyright Notice All of the images in this newsletter are copyrighted, original works by the named photographers, and are protected by Australian and International Copyright law. Use of any content from this site, for any purpose, is strictly forbidden without express, written permission of the photographer or moderator. 8