Compress/crop advice

[dannat]

As per this thread http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=30989

Does anyone have some good advice, I have a mac, no photoshop, but have gimp - which does not handle my raw images, should I save them as tiff's and work with them that way, or do something else??:shrug:


I have also downloaded xnview, does anyone use this program for resizing?
I have had it recommended by other mac users.

[dannat]

I think xnview looks the goods - it has an easy to use resize option.

What about tiff's - shold i use this instead of jpeg, what /any difference does it make?
thanks dan

[Dennis]

Hi Dan

My understanding is as follows:

JPGs are 8 bit, which means that you have 256 levels for each colour, Red, Green and Blue. So, if you have a photo of a large expanse of blue sky, then you might get banding where there are insufficient tones to smoothly transition from the darkest blue to the lightest blue.

TIFs are 16 bit, so there are 4096 levels for each colour, giving smoother tones and transitions between the tones.

I’m not quite sure how this translates to publishing of the web where the image is viewed on a monitor?

Personally, I shoot in RAW all the time as that gives me the option to always have the original data, but also the ability to save as a JPG for the web.

Cheers

Dennis

[Zuts]

Hi Dan,

I posted a reply in your image thread if you would like to look.

Paul

Edit, Sorry i didnt know you were a Mac user.

[iceman]

Always use the highest resolution you can in all of your image processing.

You should only convert to jpeg when saving for the web. If you have to compress it too far to get it under 200kb, reduce the pixels first (ie: resize to 800-100px wide).