I recently purchased a Sony Mavica F95 that I am very happy with. I have been asked to photograph images for use in a presentation that will include these images as a screened background on an overhead projector. These images have to be e-mailed to an art department that apparently has a limited ability to receive 1600x1200 images. As the screening process will degrade the images, and the graphic artist may use them in the print presentation also, quality is important. Is ther any way to compress or reduce the image for efficient e-mail while maintaining the image quality? As a long time amateur film photographer who made his way into digital photography through digital video, I'm still a little deficient in compression, interpolation and all that. Any suggetions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Larz

-- Larry Yerxa (larz@cybertours.com), June 09, 2000

Answers

You didn't say how many MB of pictures you will be dealing with so my answer is assuming you have a lot. And it sounds like you both don't have high speed internet connections. You want these images to be of the the highest resolution and least compression for printing. First of all If you are doing a lot of digital photography get a CD burner. The cost of media and the ability to read them in most all computers makes this a MUST in my mind. You can use high JPEG compression to send them the files for the presentation and then overnight mail them the files on CD for printing.

-- Ralph (REObert@aol.com), June 09, 2000.

The other thought is to invest in Genuine Fractals, a great image scaling program. Depending on the image, I've seen compression rates as good as 10:1 with their lossless format. Check them out at http://www.altamira-group.com and download their demo. When you send the compressed image, remember, the receiver needs to have the program, too. Once they decomress it, they can change the file extention from .stn to anything they want, and the quality's still there.

-- Sue Bald (destiny3@ix.netcom.com), June 09, 2000.

Try the TIFF format using the LZW compression option, or tell them to get an e-mail address that's not so tight-fisted with disk space.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), June 09, 2000.

Here is what I do: Using an Image software (Paint Shop Pro) I reduce the size to 800X640, Export as JPEG, compression 50 (use the Wizard). That is enough to 30/50/100 k file, and allows to send a dozen pictures in a reasonable time with a standard (low) speed Internet.

-- Jean-Claude PERIE (perie@swbell.net), June 09, 2000.

You could also upload the pics to a place such as www.filepool.com, then just send the url to the person who needs the pics. They can then download the files from the filepool site.

JD

-- Fanny Vi (fannyvik9@hotmail.com), June 13, 2000.