but these days I use the GIMP (freeeware and available for Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and probably others).
I've found that most applications give the opportunity to select your JPEG compression/loss level, and that anything over about 80% is reasonable, and anything over 90% is very good to look at. So it's odd that there were problems converting to a JPEG at 100%
sthughes wrote:Thanks - now all I need is a Mac!
sthughes wrote:Or perhaps it miraculously improved when I emailed it to the comp!
Very odd. I promise I did nothing to it, apart from copying it to the server, and renaming it. Maybe your monitor is dodgy?
sthughes wrote:Hmmm - I just looked at the picture where it is submitted in the photo comp - and the bad blotchyness (technical term ) has gone! Perhaps it just doesn't show up on my screen at work? Or perhaps it miraculously improved when I emailed it to the comp!
How come the pic is a BMP, is that the format your camera saves in? The bright white spots in the sky and in the snow are noise (unwanted pixels) introduced by the camera. The lack of true black is also noise. I'm sure there are a few knowledgeable photographers around here who can help you work out just why you ended up with so much noise in the picture - and maybe what to do about it next time.
As you discovered, just converting from BMP to JPG won't fix the quality of the image, and in this case made it look worse. I don't have Photoshop but I believe it has good noise reduction. You can do it manually if your software has pixel duplication. Just paint out some of the noise before you do the conversion.
Son of a Beach wrote:...Also, for nonlossy file formats to save as, I'd recommend PNG. It has fairly good compression for a non-lossy format (doesn't loose quality), unlike JPEG which is lossy...
Robbo wrote:I think there are some browser issues with PNGs. The ubiquitous jpeg is the lowest common denominator which, while not the way we ought to do most things, is probably the best for a situation like this.
Tony Robinson
Speculator wrote:I know IE doesn't work properly with 24bit transparent PNG's. If you're not using transparency you should be right though I reckon.
Son of a Beach wrote:The problem with PNGs and the photo competitions is two-fold: PNGs don't have EXIF data (at least not that the standard PHP libraries can utilise), and PNGs cannot be resized by the standard PHP libraries I'm using.
Son of a Beach wrote:Do PNGs include EXIF data?
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest