How Sharp Do Your Photos REALLY Need to Be?

Tack Sharp, Tack Sharp, Tack Sharp !!!

Everyone tells you your photos should always be tack sharp at 100% (1:1).  

But is tack sharp really necessary?

My answer is: depends.

NOTE: I'm not proposing sloppiness or bad technique, just sometimes getting tack sharp photos may prove difficult.  That can be OK.


Your photo needs to be as sharp as it needs to be, and that depends on your plans for it.  Most people aren't going to zoom your photo to 100% (1:1) or zoom at all.

Viewing Photos Electronically or Sharing in Social Media

Tack sharpness is likely the least concern in these cases.  Does the photos look sharp on your monitor?  Good enough, in my humble opinion.  One caveat: photos of items you are selling online.  Potential buyers may zoom those photos, so zoom before you post, making sure the zoom looks sharp.

Printing

Most will insist tack sharpness at 100% (1:1) for printing photos.  Again, not necessarily.  Re-size a COPY of the photo to the intended print size, and view the photo at that size on your monitor.  Don't fill the monitor.  If you plan to print a 5x7 inch photo, view it at 5x7 on your monitor.  If it looks sharp, try a test print.  Look good, great. 

Selling Photos / Entering Contests

ALWAYS strive for tack sharpness at 100% (1:1) in these cases.  If selling, people assume you are professional.  Contest judges are very detailed and, yes I'll say it, picky.  Rightfully so in both cases.

Non-tack sharp photos sales or refunds.  Not only that, you risk a bad reputation as a professional photographer. Judges, among other criteria, WILL zoom your photo to 100% (1:1), maybe more.

In these cases, learn all the techniques for getting tack sharp photos and use them: top notch lenses, tripods, camera hand-holding, focusing techniques, etc.

Achieving Tack-Sharp Photos

Here's one link on getting tack sharp photos: PhotographyCourses.biz Technical Videos. Just open the site and check off Image Sharpness.  Oh, Mike offers NUMEROUS other free videos as well as excellent paid courses, but start with the free ones.

As usual, if you have any questions, comment on this blog or email me at Brett@BrettOssman.com.

COOL Way to View Your Photos !!!

You Take Great Photos and You Want to Enjoy Them

I like viewing my photos.  I have an electronic picture frame, but frankly, I forget to turn it on and it just takes up space on my desk.  I looked into options for displaying photos on my PC.  Obviously, I can set up a screen saver to play a slide show, but I probably won't watch a screen saver.

I discovered a way to set up a slide show on my desktop display !!!

Here's a screen shot of my desktop:

My desktop changes the photo every 10 minutes.

How did I do this?

Set Up the Windows Desktop

Now, these are Windows 10 instructions, but I understand earlier Windows versions, back to Windows 7 I believe, have the same type of features.  I suspect Mac computers can do the same.

Create a folder for your desktop photos.  My folder happens to be F:\Laptop Monitor\Laptop.  Next step is to set up the Windows desktop to display a slide show.

Right click on your desktop, and click Personalize:

• Select Themes
• Select Theme Settings
• Select Desktop Background

 

• Set up your desktop as you wish. At minimum, set:  
• Background to Slideshow
• Album to the folder you created above
• Change Picture Every: how often you want photos to change
• I recommend Choose to Fit set to Center.

 Here's my settings.

 

Prepare Desktop Photos

OK, now prepare and store your photos for your desktop display. 

Don't overwrite the original photo.  Save a copy to your desktop photo folder.  You may want the original for another purpose later, like printing.

Re-size and save photos for your desktop display. 

Re-sizing isn't absolutely necessary, but I didn't want my icons on top of my photos, nor did I want Windows sizing them for me. 

As most of you will use a variety of photo editing software, I won't get into details for re-sizing.  Re-sizing, when available tends to be VERY simple, so check your photo editor.  BUT, if you need some help learning how, let me know which software by name.

For my 1440x900 laptop display, I found re-sizing to 1296x810 pixels worked great.  Experiment with re-sizing for your monitor, display and layout.  

HINT: Set up some sort of preset or automated action you can easily apply to future photos you want to include.  For example, in Lightroom, set up a Preset, or Photoshop an Action, to re-size and save future photos.

Save the re-sized files to your desktop folder. Save as a JPG/JPEG file.  IF you can set quality, try 6-8 out of 10 or mid-range.  If quality isn't an option, don't worry about it, just save JPG. :-)

Manage Slideshow Folders

Want to change the photos displayed?  Simply re-size and save new ones, or delete one from the desktop folder.  No need to mess with the desktop settings anymore.

Any questions or help I can offer, let me know.

Quick Tips for Anyone with a Camera - Where did I Put that Photo?

OK, so you've taken a bunch of photos, maybe hundreds or even thousands.  Then one day you want to find one of them, or you want to post them online so someone else can find them.  Odds are the folder, directory or file name aren't going to have all the combinations one would ever search for.

This is where keywords come in, and you can put them into any photo you want. For Windows folks, you can even right-click a photo and add them, but any photo software probably has an easier way.

Take, the following photo.

There could be any of a number of reasons one would want to see this photo:

• For a contest: rest, relaxation, beach, ocean, Atlantic Ocean, people, etc.
• Mom remembers a photo of a beach with a lifeguard stand that she wants
• I want to put it on a sales site and set up for anyone to search for it anyway I can think of

Try covering all that in a folder or file name.

How would anyone find it, especially months or years down the road.  Sure, you could scan through a folder of hundreds or thousands of photos.  That will likely be a lesson in futility, at best, assuming one finds it at all.

I use Adobe Lightroom CC, so, just for the sake of example, I'll demonstrate with it.

I set up a grouped set of keywords in categories.  This makes it very easy to QUICKLY scan through the keywords, and click off the ones I want (no typing, guessing, or remembering).  Each group contains sub-groups and keywords.





The entire list is attached in the link below and can be imported into Lightroom, and maybe other programs.

My Lightroom Keywords File

Here's the keywords I applied to the above in less than a minute:

Atlantic Ocean, Beach, Blue, Brown, Colorful, Flagler Beach, Florida, Gray, Grey, Lifeguard, Lifeguard Stand, Outdoors, Nature, People, Playful, Playing, Recreation, Red, Skin Tone, Swim, Swimming, Water, White, Yellow