Pendant by Ruthie Cohen

Brooch by Judith Kaufman

Photo by Robert Diamante

All digital photographs use pixels to record light. Pixels are the language of digital imagery. An imaging chip basically consists of a rectangular grid of light detection sensors, or pixels--kind of like a solar panel. Inside the digital camera, this grid is positioned where a frame of film would have been in a traditional camera. When you press the shutter, the camera's pixel management programming will dictate the quality of the photo. When the shutter opens, the imaging chip is powered and the pixels begin recording the level of light they are exposed to. Each pixel builds an electric charge. When the shutter closes, the camera records the charge level that was built on every single pixel as a binary number and saves them all to create a photo file. Light levels from each pixel are converted into numbers--this is what makes it digital.

Pin by Mike Kozumplik Photos by Jerry Anthony Jerry Anthony's equipment and techniques: Taken with a Kodak DCSn digital camera which can capture up to a 14 megapixel image and a Nikon ED AF Micro 70-180 zoom lens. Both images were shot at about F22 at 1 second and then downloaded into an Apple G5 IMac. Files were manipulated in Photoshop CS and saved as RGB TIFF files, 3000 x 4500 pixels at 300 DPI.

Tango. Blue/green tourmaline, 8.81 ct., cut by Steven Avery, Fabricated in iris gold (rich yellow gold graduated to white gold). Accented by .21 ct of VVS1 E Ideal cut diamonds. By Adam Neeley, G.G. Photo by Hap Sakwa.

The manual will tell you the dimensions for your camera's imaging chip, but here's an example: in a two megapixel camera, the chip is usually about 1200 pixels high and 1600 pixels wide. Multiply those numbers, and you get 1,920,000 total pixels. (For the math challenged, that's almost two megapixels, or 2,000,000. Megapixels are calculated by counting all the pixels on your camera's imaging chip and dividing by one million, or mega.) So, when buying a camera, the wider and taller the imaging chip, the more pixels it has. More pixels means more information gathered when taking a shot--easy, right? Here's where it gets weird. You would think that the higher the megapixel count of your camera the better the photos will be. Not true--especially if you aren't going to print those photos. The most important thing to remember with digital photography is this: as long as you have enough pixels for the size of a print, your photos will be great. Returning to the two-megapixel camera example, if you print photos on a home printer at 200 dots per inch (DPI) you will have enough pixels for a good 6 inch by 8 inch print. To calculate print dimensions, divide 1200 and 1600 (the size of the imaging chip, remember?) by 200 (the DPI of the printer). It's as simple as that. If you want to print gallery or jury prints, or files to submit to a magazine or book publisher, you would probably go to 360 DPI and you'd only get a 3-1/3 by 4-1/2 inch print from the same file. This is the main reason to go for more pixels when you buy a camera. If you usually make 8 by 10 inch prints at 200 DPI or smaller, a two or three-megapixel camera may be fine for your uses. But if you intend to print big and/or at a high DPI count, or if you are writing a book or a magazine article, or making a print advertisement and taking your own shots, you'll need more megapixels to handle the high DPI requirements needed for quality reproduction printing.

A Workflow for Photo Success

1. Always shoot photos at the largest file size your camera can produce. You may only be able to shoot one or two pieces per session before you must empty the camera's storage card, but big files in the beginning will pay off with flexibility in the end.
2. Shoot several shots of each piece, once you have arranged it in a way you like. I like to shoot five frames of every ''pose.'' This ensures that one will be perfect once I edit the take (decide on the ''keepers'' from a photo session). Do not ever edit based on what you see in the tiny camera monitor. Use your PC and your photo manipulation software for that. This is the time to delete any fuzzy, poorly exposed, or badly lit shots. Try to narrow them down to one or two shots per piece.
3. Save these files immediately to the PC in the raw format created by the camera. Don't do anything to them except drag them into a folder and then back them up onto a CD. If you like, you can change the file name to match the name of the piece. Label the folder and disk ''Edited Raws''. Do not ever do anything to these files except copy them. That way, if you sell the piece, you have the original, camera generated, non-manipulated files you shot.
4. Create four more folders on your PC. Label them as follows: Masters, For Print, For Home, For Web. These are the storage folders for your photo archive.
5. Each time you shoot a piece, create a copy of the raw file at 600 DPI and save it into the Masters folder. Manipulate this file to your heart's content--play with the levels, curves, sharpness and color balance until you love what you see. Don't crop away too much of the background, especially if you intend to submit it to a publisher or printer. Once you are happy, save this file in tiff format. This is your master file. Never manipulate it again.
6. Duplicate the Master file you made and save it into the For Print folder. When you need a ''hi-res'' file, this is the one to use--600 DPI tiff files are big, so you won't be able to e-mail it. But a book or magazine editor (like me) will love you for having a file at this resolution and in the tiff format.
7. Go back to the Master file and ''save as'' into the For Home folder. Change the resolution of the newly saved file to 200 DPI. This is the file to use for home printouts, inventory, and general bookkeeping. It will be fine for slideshows on CD, too, and will print well on a laser printer or inkjet. This size is probably big enough for business cards or postcards but may be too big to e-mail, so test it on your friends.
8. Once again, go back to the Master file and ''save as'' into the For Web folder. Change the resolution of the newly saved file to 72 DPI, in jpeg file format. This is the file to use for your Web site, emailing, or online use. Don't try to print it, unless you need a tiny image. On the average home printer, it will be a bit larger than a postage stamp.
9. Don't ever jpeg a jpeg file! If you need a tightly cropped thumbnail or smaller version of an image, go back to your Master and ''save as'' rather than re-saving a file from the For Web folder. Each time you use the jpeg file format, image information is lost in order to optimize the data.
10. Save and save often. Make regular backups of your image archive to CD. I like to shoot photos of new works two or three times a year and backup at each session. It's nice to have those files on the hard drive, but computers fry when you really need them, so don't lose your images--it's hard enough to let the pieces go when you sell them!

Digital Photo File Management:

• Jerry Anthony (614) 451-5207
  www.jerryanthonyphoto.com
• Hap Sakwa (707) 823-5787
  www.hapsakwa.com
• Robert Diamante (207) 874-0587
  www.robertdiamante.com

Customer Comments

We would like to share some of the customer comments we received in response to the article, "Pixel Perfect," featured in a newsletter. Please keep in mind that the comments expressed below are those of our customers and do not reflect the views of Fire Mountain Gems and Beads.