Dpi, Ppi, File Types, Resolution

This is the first part of a two-part posting about photographing art. It’s meant for traditional artists faced with the difficult task of photographing and submitting art in digital formats.

There are lots of different file types (jpeg, tiff, png, etc.) but the more common applications revolve around Tiff vs Jpeg files.

Once a Tiff file is created, it can be re-opened and re-saved over and over with no loss of data. Jpeg files can’t. The more they are re-saved the more data they lose. Jpeg files throw away data that isn’t deemed necessary. For instance, if a painting contains many different values of blue in a sky, perhaps working down to a lighter, brighter, horizon line, the Jpeg algorithm will throw away some of those blue values so the file can be compressed. Every time it is re-saved it will continue to throw away more of those closely related values until image quality seriously suffers. The remaining file may produce good quality reproductions that are 5″x7″ for example and yet produce unusable images for making life-size reproductions (limited editions, canvas transfers) requiring larger dimensions of, say, 18″ x 24″. So if you’ve re-worked your Jpeg files trying to get better color reproduction and have saved the file six or seven times in the process, the file is going to be too corrupt to produce larger, printed reproductions. Tiff files reproduce what’s been saved without unilaterally manipulating the saved data.

Also, since Tiff files save all the RGB data (Red, Green, Blue), Tiff files are much larger than Jpegs. For instance, a 4MB Jpeg file may save at closer to 10MB in Tiff format. When submitting these to us, reduce the Tiff file to around 5MB first and then send it to us. Most email programs won’t handle file sizes that get too large.

If you’re submitting a Jpeg file to us, make sure you haven’t saved it more than a couple of times when processing the image.

Our next instalment will discuss the mechanics involved in photographing artwork. Even professional photographers have trouble with this. It’s not as easy as you’d think.

As for Dpi (Dots per inch), Ppi (Pixels per inch) and image resolution, click here for a good, quick understandable explanation.

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Photographing Your Art

How do I photograph my art?  

This is a common problem for traditional artists. You’d think with modern digital cameras and “point and shoot” technology that photographing paintings done in oils, watercolors, acrylics and the like would be simple; but any artist, amateur photographer or professional photographer who’s tried will tell you that it’s one of the more difficult things to do.

We’re going to run a two-part series this week that discusses how to photograph your art and also how to manipulate the image to adjust colors and clarity so that the image is accurately portrayed. We’ll also discuss things like dpi, ppi, resolution, pixels and how all this relates to file size and submitting your image.

We’ll keep it simple, basic and try to avoid all the hi-tech camera talk that the photographers and printers throw around so easily.

So stay tuned over the next few days and hopefully we’ll provide some information that will help you with, not only this contest, but future situations that require  high quality photographs of your art.

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