HD Photos, Pigment Printers, and Cropping Tips

Will HD Photos Replace JPEGs?

Rob Galbraith at Rob Galbraith DPI gives a quick review of the buzz about HD Photos in his post titled “CNET looks at HD Photo format”.  I'm no big fan of making obsolete the technology that has already provided me with 16,000 photos over the last 5 years, but I might make an exception for the new HD Photo format proposed by Microsoft.  It's basically a photo format that acts like a JPEG with better quality characteristics.  Of course, there are some other perks to the new format, so read the article if you're interested.

Get the Low-Down on Pigment Printers

Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer writes a follow-up article to pigment-based printers called “Pig. Printers: More Info Needed…“.  The original article can be found at “Current Pigment Printers“.  If you're getting serious about printing your own work, this is some very good information.  Pigment printers offer a level up from traditional dye-based printers in areas of quality, photo life expectancy, and ability to print larger formats.

Cropping Photos for Better Composition

Elizabeth West at Photodoto posts a good set of tips in her article “How to Crop a Photo for Better Composition“.  In addition to providing a technical explanation of how to crop, she lists out the possible reasons for cropping including: eliminate distractions, emphasizing, moving the main subject, and changing orientation.  Cropping is an important tool for creating a good composition, but ALWAYS keep in mind that cropping removes pixels.  If you remove too many pixels, you can end up with a much smaller photo than you started with.  I will crop as needed, but I try to keep it to a minimum so that my final outputs are near the maximum resolution that I started with. 

Photo of the Day…

Photo by Brian Auer
10/07/06 Delaware Water Gap, NJ
Fallen tree with orange fungus growing on it
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Konica Minolta AF DT 18-200
90mm equiv * f/10 * 1/13s * ISO400