Orchid Photography Book Seeks Submissions

[Brutal_Dreamer]

BD - can you explain this resolution stuff to a non -techie? I looked in the manual and my unedited pictures are 2304 x 1728 pixels. Is that close to 300 dpi? How do you translate?

Hi Diane! Yes that is great. I am away from my computer at home for a few days, but when I get back, I will produce a chart or graph that explains pixels and dots per inch more clearly. I am at my dad's house this weekend for father's day

Cheers!
BD

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Hi BD,
Well I just submitted a few pictures (only 3 so far) but it seems like there is a problem with the submission. It kept giving me the error message. I will send in more. In the mean time, could you please take a look at it when you get a chance? BTW, I am interested in the picture guidelines/info that you are thinking about writing up for Diane. I have the original digital files of these pictures (0.8-1 MB) for each. The resolution must be very high and it should make your job a breeze. If you need files like that, certainly, I can obliged.

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Hi BD,
Well I just submitted a few pictures (only 3 so far) but it seems like there is a problem with the submission. It kept giving me the error message. I will send in more. In the mean time, could you please take a look at it when you get a chance? BTW, I am interested in the picture guidelines/info that you are thinking about writing up for Diane. I have the original digital files of these pictures (0.8-1 MB) for each. The resolution must be very high and it should make your job a breeze. If you need files like that, certainly, I can obliged.

Hi Hoa!

Thanks for participating!!! I cannot tell you how much it means to me that so many people from the forum are submitting photos!! I have been doing some research this afternoon to answer Diane's question, but I have not got everything together to post it yet.

I just checked and your submissions came through. The photos are beautiful! The files are small (only 72 dpi). To be used in the book the file needs to be much larger (the original files you mention should be great).

If you or anyone else gets an error message, would you please either PM me with the error message or post it here so I can see what is going on. I set the server up to accept files up to 16 MB each. The file types it will accept are: .jpeg, .jpg, .JPEG, .JPG, .tif, .tiff, .TIF, .TIFF, .txt, and .TXT. As long as your files are one of these types, you should not get an error message from the server. If you are uploading a very large file, and have a slower internet connection, your connection could possibly time out resulting in an error. If this is a problem for any forum member, I can PM an email address where you can email a .zip or .arc file of your photos and that should solve that problem.

Hoa, thank you again for participating!

Cheers!
BD

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Hi Bruce,
I just re-submitted one of the pictures sent earlier (the oncidium onustum). Would you please check and see whether that picture is good enough? I used a different procedure in saving and transfering the file. In previous copying, I believe the file was reduced to a size of around 20-40 kbytes for posting in this forum. This time, the file is around 300 kbytes. Lets' see if it's better for your purpose.
Regards. Hoa.

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Hi Hoa,

The re-submitted image is perfect! It will work great. Thanks!


Cheers!
BD

[Brutal_Dreamer]

Hi! Although all of the terminology is fairly confusing, after reading on the web for awhile this afternoon, I feel I understand it a little better than before. Here goes…

DPI is an abbreviation meaning: Dots Per Inch. Images are made up of a series of small dots (pixels). The more dots per inch that an image has, the higher the resolution will be.

Resolution is also sometimes also referred to as sharpness.

The density or number of the dots, known as the resolution, determines how sharply the image is represented. This is often expressed in (dpi) or by the number of rows and columns, such as 600 by 800. So in general the more dots per inch translates to a higher resolution and a greater amount of visible detail in an image.

Every digital image is composed of pixels. Pixels are the small square dots of color that can be seen when images are blown up or expanded beyond their full size.

Resolution then is the number of pixels in the horizontal direction by the number of pixels in the vertical direction. For example, a picture with 600 pixels at the horizontal direction and 1200 pixels at the vertical direction would have a resolution of 600 x 1200 pixels at a certain number of pixels per inch. If we increase the number of pixels per inch, the image size will decrease because you're "compressing" the information in the image and making it sharper. For example, a picture that's 48 x 32 inches in actual print size at 72 pixels per inch will become a 4.8 x 3.2-inch size picture at 720 pixels per inch. The new resolution is 10 times denser at 720 pixels per inch, so the picture ends up being one-tenth its original size.

The higher the resolution, the larger the image will appear on your screen. Monitors can only resolve 72 pixels per inch, so if your camera takes pictures at 300 pixels per inch (for example), all of that information has to be put somewhere. So it fills up the screen with it. Professional printing, however, can handle much higher resolutions than a computer monitor, up to hundreds of pixels per inch. In fact, if the picture is *not* high resolution, it will look grainy on the page. So, the higher the resolution, the better the image looks when printed because it has more pixels squeezed into a certain amount of space. The extra pixels allow for better color representation and smoother transitions between colors.

QUESTION
So, what type of image should one upload to for publication consideration?

ANSWER
Images that have very high pixel counts or images that have very high resolution (dpi).

We are really looking for images that are 9” x 11.25” or larger at 300 dpi (2700 x 3375 pixels) for full bleed printing.


If all of this is still way to confusing, then just do the following.

If you have a digital camera, simply set it to the highest rating and submit the resulting file. Most digital cameras can save an image as a .tif or. tiff file. This is the best type of image because it has the least amount of loss when compressed. (This also means a larger file to upload, which will take a bit more time. But if you can, it will be worth it when the image is printed!!)

If you want to retouch the image before submitting it, please save your file at the maximum quality setting using .jpg compression in your photo processing program.

For anyone who doesn’t have photo processing software and wants to try it out, you can download a completely free program that works very much like PhotoShop at THE GIMP Using this program, you can check your file sizes and see how changing the dpi of your images effects the print quality of your images. This program is available for all platforms including Macs!

Let me know if I need to explain something more clearly.

Cheers!
BD

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Bruce, thanks for the article!
BTW, this is the error I got when I tried to re-submit the pictures:
"Error, query failed". Hope you can tell us what the problem is.
Cheers. Hoa.

[Diane]

I received that same error a couple of times, but then resubmitted later and the file uploaded.

As for DPI - well your explanation is detailed, and I have a better understanding.... but I'm just sending you what I have and I'll let you decide if anything is worth using...

[Brutal_Dreamer]

I received that same error a couple of times, but then resubmitted later and the file uploaded.

As for DPI - well your explanation is detailed, and I have a better understanding.... but I'm just sending you what I have and I'll let you decide if anything is worth using...

Hi Diane and Hoa!

I have been looking into that error since Hoa posted this morning. It appears that it might be caused by server activity. If more than one person is uploading at the same time, the database will only allow access to one upload at a time. Last evening there were 10 or 11 new uploads. Maybe that was the problem. I am still checking. I have been reading some tech forums about php and mysql databases. I thought this might be the case when Tim emailed, but after reading, I feel fairly certain it is. I will keep checking though to see if I can find anything else out.

Thanks so much for your submissions! Hoa, please try again if you were unable to upload what you wanted. All of the images are so beautiful! Thanks so much to everyone! Be sure to spread the word to everyone you know who may be interested. I posted a link at a photography forum I visit and have had some good response there too, although most people there think orchids are 'too expensive' to buy to photograph. lol.

Cheers!
BD

[Jmoney]

Hey Bruce, did you ever get a photo of my St. Swithin? wasn't sure if I had actually successfully uploaded it.