First try at a composite photo edit....

Self Made Knives

Well-Known Member
Here's my first attempt at photo editing a composite knife image. It's not perfect, but I think its something I can get better at eventually. I had to cut the resolution down some so it would post though. If anyone has any tips or knows of a good composite "how to" somewhere, please share. I looked around online and it seems like the people who are good at this must keep it to themselves.
1st attempt composite copy 2 smaller.jpg
 
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That looks great, Anthony. To get the file size down, did you "flatten" the image afterward? Any file with layers is going to be massive. Make a copy, flatten it, then save as- .jpg
 
Looks good to me, Anthony. I have no tips to offer other than to keep at it. I keep trying and trying to get good photos of my knives, but I seem fail every time. It's hard to push myself to take better pics when I have absolutely no interest in photography. Just another one of those skills of the trade that I need to work on. What software did you use to make the composite?
 
Thanks guys, I was using an older version of Adobe Elements. I think its a stripped down of Photoshop, my wife had it and never used it much. I did a "merge visible" to remove the layers (I think) but still ended up with a huge file. I had to save a copy at lower quality so the forum would accept it. There must be a size limit on here, not sure. I'm not really that interested in photography either, but I am a huge cheapskate! I hate paying someone for something I can do myself.
 
I think you did great. Any time you work with layers you are going to have a mega huge file. Merging the layers helps. Another is to save as a .jpg file type.

You did the right thing to downsize your files, which isn't always as easy as one would think because many free photo software programs don't have that capability. What they do have is to decrease the resolution, just as you did. Some do this better than others. A lot of times you will notice that the downsampled file doesn't have the details or tonal gradation that you worked so hard to get in your photo. But such is life. It will be close enough for web viewing. People have gotten use to seeing photos on their computer and forgot what great photographs really look like. At any rate, your photos won't look any worse than anyone else's.


Nerd alert: only read beyond this point if you care about how image files work:

Digital file sizes are measured in pixels-per-inch. They are given in the length of pixels per side and this will vary per camera model. For instance: the native file size for my camera is 6016 x4000. (you can do a quick google search for your camera's specs, or look in your camera's menus) This is a 24 mega pixel image. In other words, RIDICULOUSLY HUGE.

For a good photo quality print, a rough rule of thumb is you want 300 pixels per inch. If you divide the length of each side of that file: 6016 pixels / 300 pixels per inch = 20 inches on the long side, and 4000 / 300 = 13 inches on the short side. Therefore I can make a 13x19 inch print without any loss in image quality. This is the "native" size of my file. However, that's a physical print on paper. Your monitor doesn't need anything even close to that. Again, a typical computer monitor can probably only show about 100 pixels per inch. To show that file at full size on a your monitor, it would be the size of your living room wall.

On web forums such as this one, the web server is going to resize the image file anyway. You can upload a 24 megabyte file and it's still going to display exactly like a 5 megabyte file. So, rather than eat up BossDog's server storage, you can do him a big favor and downsize your file to something on the order of 600 to 800 pixels on the long side, or shoot for something around 5 megabytes if you only see a file size option.
 
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Just a suggestion for anyone out there who doesn't get into the whole photo editing software business, a really good free program is Picasa. You can do some really nice, quick and easy photo editing and even create photo albums online to share your photos. It also organizes the photos on your computer (without moving them) into an easy to browse visual menu. Picasa is a Google product and it is wonderful for anyone who isn't geared toward high-level photo editing.
 
John, do you really "need" a 5 meg file size to display a photo on a forum? I'm usually go for no more than a 1/2 meg file size for photos - perhaps I'm loosing too much quality? Comments please?

Ken H>
 
Ken, no, you are absolutely correct. You most certainly do not need a 5MB file for the web. I only used that as a reference because the cameras that some people use only let you pick from a few file sizes. A lot of people don't use photo editing software at all and don't know how to resize images. For those folks, choosing the smallest file size your camera offers is what they should do for web-only pics.

A file size of 1000 x 800 would equal just under 1Mb. That's a big display size on a computer screen.

*The size of the file does not equal a better quality photo on your screen. It only makes a LARGER photo.
 
Here's an example of file size. Same photo saved at two different sizes.

The first one is sized at 960 pixels x 678 pixels. The file size is 117kb

neck knife back and side 960x678.jpg


This version is saved at 480 pixels x 336 pixels. file size 76kb
neck knife back and side half size 480x336.jpg


The thumbnail appears the same size. That's because the web forum software is handling that. If you mouse over the thumbnail, you'll discover that when they expand, the first one will expand to be twice the size that the second one will. The quality of the photo stays the same. The only thing that changes is size.
 
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Thanks for the response John - you and I are exactly on the same track. Even with today's broadband connections, one of my pet peeves is folks sending 5 meg photos in emails. This came from the '90's while cruising on a sailboat in the islands and my net connection was dialup at $1/minute! A 1 meg file can clog the pipe for a LONG time before you get to next msg. Back then you couldn't skip a large file and get the next msg in line, had to take them as they came.

Ken H>
 
For anyone who doesn't have photo editing software:

By the way, your computer has a little utility called "Paint" (if you're using Windows) Paint isn't much of a program, but it's pretty darn good at resizing images. I used Paint for the above example.

Keep in mind: These files are TINY. Don't go thinking you can use these tiny files sizes for anything other than internet viewing. If you tried to print those photos larger than a postage stamp, the images would fall apart into a mess of big square fuzzy pixels.

When you take your photos, use the best resolution you have. Then resize them to use on the forums and stuff. It would be a shame to sell a knife and then later on want a great photo, only to discover you only have this teeny thumbnail quality photo of a knife that is long gone.
 
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Thanks for the response John - you and I are exactly on the same track. Even with today's broadband connections, one of my pet peeves is folks sending 5 meg photos in emails. This came from the '90's while cruising on a sailboat in the islands and my net connection was dialup at $1/minute! A 1 meg file can clog the pipe for a LONG time before you get to next msg. Back then you couldn't skip a large file and get the next msg in line, had to take them as they came.

Ken H>

Oh man, you are so right. And with everyone's phone taking photos at 5mb native resolution, they want to send you 25 snapshots in a text message and you soon find out that your phone is full with no way to resize the photos, so you end up deleting them.
 
phones and cameras have gone off the deep end with Megapixels. Even professional photographers are shaking their heads. "Great, just what I need, more useless megapixels." I was making gorgeous 13x19 prints with 16MP straight from the camera. Now my new one has 24MP. I only bought it for better dynamic range and low light sensitivity, which the higher MP count on the same size sensor works against. The camera can darn near see in the dark, but the extra MP are useless to me and the file sizes are crazy. I have a 4TB NAS to store my photos on to get them off my computer because files this size eat hard drive space like candy.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, prints pictures anymore. The idea that your phone is a 5MP (or more!) camera is ludicrous. Even on a retina display, you aren't even coming close to seeing that resolution on a screen you can hold in your hand. People are paying out the wazoo for data and they don't even know that 90 percent of it is wasted.
 
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