Photographing Your Work - Software 1

Regardless of which photo editing software you use, a few features are common to any software package worth its salt. Let's discuss five basic tools that every woodturner should have on their workbench: crop, resize, levels, unsharp mask, and curves.

The first two may already be familiar to you.

CROP

Did you ever include something in your image that didn't belong (such as a sugar bowl)? Cropping may be the answer. Cropping simply involves cutting a section out of your image to create a new image.

Here's an example:

This shot should obviously have been taken closer to the subject. No problem. Using the crop tool you simply select the area of the image you want to keep (photo on the left below) and then double-click that selected section to cut it out of the original. (NOTE: These steps are true for many software packages; check your software's "HELP" feature if this isn't the case for you).

     

If you like the newly cropped image you simply save it (hopefully you remembered to use a copy and not the original). If not you just "undo" (or close the image window and start over).

Crop is a handy tool but it should be used with caution.

Cropping, in itself, does not change the number of pixels used in the cropped area. If I cut a 600x400 pixel section from a larger image I have not affected the "resolution" of the cropped area, I've simply changed the overall image size. I still have the same 600x400 pixels as in the original.

The impact to image quality occurs when I resize the image (see below) to offset the change to the new image size. How much of an impact depends on how tightly I cropped and/or how much I have had to increase the size of the new image.

Which leads us to the next topic:

RESIZE

Resizing, or "scaling", an image is possibly the most commonly used editing function. Anyone who has ever posted images on-line should be familiar with it.

Resize does exactly what it sounds like: it allows you to change the size of your image. A typical resize dialog (GIMP calls it "Scale") looks like the following:

The image associated with this dialog (not shown) currently has a resolution of 3872 pixels wide by 2592 pixels high. To change the resolution you would simply change one or both of the "Width" or "Height" values.

Note that the chain symbols (shown to the right of the "Image Size" values) means that those values are currently "linked" together, meaning if you change one the other will automatically change. This ensures that the aspect ratio (or ratio of width to height) is maintained. You could (if you chose) unlink the two values by clicking the chain symbol, thus making it possible to only change one value without the other being affected. Doing so, of course, would stretch your image in one direction or the other. (Have you ever wished that bowl was a bit taller? OK, just joking there. Don't do this!)

Once again, the resize feature has a direct impact on image quality. Quality is typically not degraded when resolution is decreased (i.e. the image is resized smaller). But when increasing resolution one should be aware that image quality could be degraded.

IMAGE SIZE AND THE WEB

How do you best preserve image quality? Compose your shots at the camera so that heavy cropping isn't necessary. For web photos the only resizing you should need to do is to scale down an image so it fits within the guidelines of your favorite photo hosting site or turning forum.

What size should web images be? That typically depends on the site you intend to post them to but here are a few thoughts to keep in mind:

1) Image size and resolution directly affect the amount of disk space needed to store an image. Many websites have image size restrictions to help them conserve storage space.

2) Image size and resolution also affect a potential viewer's download time. Larger images take longer to download, particularly for those folks with slower internet connection speeds.

3) If you plan to post your image on a woodturning forum a good rule-of-thumb is to resize your image to no larger than 800x600 and no smaller than 600x400. This range ensures the image will be visible on most computer monitors and makes downloading time quicker for those with slower connection speeds.

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