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belle
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 Posted -
24/09/2007
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14:52
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I have finally got round to scanning some of the post cards i have, thought I would start with transport. However havving uploaded a pic onto the site I now can't find it to transfer it to here. It's in the X catagory, and is entitled Army Bi planes on Franborough common...have a couple of other pics to put on but will wait to see if i can do this one first!
Life is what you make it
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Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 30/09/2007 : 08:31
I'm not qualified to join in this rarified discussion about size and formats. My view is that when I post a pic I want to give viewers enough quality to read it on the screen and it's possible to save and print with reasonable quality. If anyone is interested and wants a high res file for non-profit purposes I'll always supply one if requested but keeping the file size down on the site discourages anyone who wants to pinch the image for commercial purposes.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk  |
Callunna
Revolving Grey Blob
3044 Posts
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Posted - 30/09/2007 : 15:53
quote:
It works in photoshop. It doesn't work when its reduced to a lowly jpg which is what the web uses.
See, you're just not getting my point. My point is that a file saved at 72dpi doesn't have as much info as one saved at 300dpi, regardless of humble JPGs or what the web does to it. I did as you suggested - downloaded the bandstand photo from where it was posted on the forum. I then enlarged it from 50 to 200mm wide in Photoshop (future historians may well have an even better program). Anyone wishing to use such a photo in an exhibition would want to prepare it in some way, not use it straight from the web. It printed out really well, considering the original scan was lacking in tonal quality because the original photo was poor. If the downloaded scan had only been at 72dpi it would have lost a lot of detail. Photoshop can only work its magic if it has data to manipulate. My point - again - is that if you have the capability and can be bovvered, then saving your file at 300dpi gives future historians a fighting chance to get the best results. We may not be around to provide them with a hi-res version. But you HAVE to reduce the pixel dimensions otherwise your image would be too large to be manageable on the website. If you still think I'm wrong, then it's my fault as I must not have explained myself and my reasons well enough. I won't reply to this thread anymore as it must be boring the pants off most people. I'll continue to prepare my pics the way I think best and others will do it their way. |
softsuvner
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Posted - 30/09/2007 : 21:33
I think Photoshop is the best thing since sliced bread, especially now I've treated myself to Elements Version 5. But I'm not sure that I follow this argument at all.
And I am still waiting to see Belle's photos!
Malcolm
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panbiker
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Posted - 30/09/2007 : 22:40
Bang on Cally, no need to repeat, it was perfectly understandable the first time round. I think Pluggy is going a bit overboard on the techno-babble. Here's my two pennorth on the subject:
A bit of not too distant history first. In the early 80's when DTP systems and affordable home computers were in their infancy, my wife Sally decided to run for public office, in order to help achieve this I was allocated the job of producing her electoral leaflets. They were printed using an offset litho printer in the back room of the Weavers Union on Frank Street (where the Post Office is now) The master artwork to produce the plates for the litho were cut and pasted in the early days, a very laborious business and not very versatile. The advent of DTP for the BBC Micro revolutionised the process and made production of the master artwork a lot easier. Manipulating the text and graphics was easy but the only way to get photograps on the page was to use a process camera to produce a dot screened version of the image. The same principle as used by the newspapers at the time. The artwork was produced leaving white space where the photographs would be placed. Before the advent of laser printers the output from the DTP package would be printed on a dot matrix printer, 9 pin in the early days and eventualy 24 pin as the technology developed. By the late 80's and successive campaigns I was using a PC at home and had access to a laser printer at work. The basic text and graphics were produced using DTP and printed using a 300dpi laser, white space was left in the leaflet design for the pictures. The artwork was photographed with the process camera and an A4 acetate produced. Photographs were processed using a 100dpi dot screen filter which produced another acetate scaled to fit the white space, this was placed on top of the artwork acetate and used to produce the metal printer plates. The printer plates were positive etch resist copper exposed to timed UV light through the acetate. The exposed plates were then etched in acid to produce the final plate for the printer. The entire process took about 2 days to produce each 5,000 leaflet run.
The relevance to the debate about dpi, pixels, jpegs and the like is as follows:
In printing, the resolution of the image is directly propotional to the number of dots it contains. A photograph screened at 300dpi is better than one screened at 100dpi. 100dpi is fine for a scaled down photo on a leaflet but would be useless if you enlarged it to A4. In computing terms, gif, tif, bmp, jpg and the other countless encoding schemes used by various flavours of computer programs are purely and simply that, different ways of encoding the information, some better than others. The crux of the matter is this, the more information you can store the better the result. The encoding scheme is only relevant to the application that you are using to view the image.
Just to complete the mini history of electoral leaflet printing. The next major leap in technology for the budding propagandist came in the late 80's, early 90's with the advent of the copifax machine, an amalgamation of a scanner and photocopier. This revolutionised the production process. A lot more civilised than the litho days. I could produce the same 5,000 A4 leflets on the copifax in about 2 hours as opposed to 2 days using the litho process. Master artwork could now contain pictures. Laser printers had got to 600dpi so the 600dpi master was fed into the machine which scanned it and produced as many copies as you wanted at about 100ppm. The machine would print 5,000 sheets in less than an hour for each side.
Sally's campaign material was produced with the litho process and a lot of hard graft well into the night at the Weavers. Many a night I finally got home at 3 or 4am after producing the leaflet run, it took the best part of an hour to clean the machine down ready for the next run. A few years later we were printing for the entire Pendle Constituency using the copifax which helped to elect our present M.P
Well off topic with all this but an interesting bit of social history.
Edited by - panbiker on 30 September 2007 22:54:30
Ian |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 05:43
Wonderful how things progress. I was talking to faniel Meadows a month or so ago about the time when he was in Nelson as artist in residence snapping pics. The 10X8 prints were all done on glossy bromide and dried on a wonderful machine with a heated polished drum about 30" diameter and a wool mixture blanket belt to keep the prints flat, a bit like a taping machine. Wonderful when it worked but hours and hours spent cleaning and polishing the drum and washing and drying the belt. I have some dye separation pics a mate of mine did for me and that was just like a big slow p/copier. Slow but wonderful and permanent quality. I have some old books where the B&W illustrations are wonderful, they are individual photographs stuck in after the book was made...... I think the £88 scanner I have now will do 24,000 at 48 bit...... Takes forever to do a scan but the detail is stunning if you zoom in. I only tried one at that res.... it took about 30 minutes to scan a 35mm neg. I'm quietly chewing away at scanning all my neg files (yes, all of them!) don't know if I'll ever finish the job but I'm doing the 35mm negs at 1600dpi and they are good enough for the archive. This scanner is fastest I have seen, it does 6 negs at once but even so it takes about 90 minutes to do one film....... I haven't even bothered counting how many there are to do!
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
marilyn
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 10:42
Belle...Belle...come back! (we seem to have lost the poor woman).....
Where are your pics, Belle?
get your people to phone my people and we will do lunch...MAZ |
Callunna
Revolving Grey Blob
3044 Posts
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 12:04
I know I said I wouldn't reply again regarding the photo issue, but I just want to apologise wholeheartedly for going off topic. I hope this hasn't put Tinker off and that she will continue to provide the photos, one way or t'other.
Maybe the mods could shift all the posts containing the techie stuff to a new thread, so that the waters aren't muddied here? Once again, sorry for hijacking Belle's topic on Early Transport which promises to be a very interesting subject. |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 12:33
Og wouldn't be OG if we stayed on topic! Belle, the offer to post the pics is still there. Send them to me and we'll get early transport back on track again......
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 12:38
Early transport..... A packhorse train in the 18th Century.
A broad wheeled wagon used for heavy transport at the same time.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
panbiker
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 13:42
That last picture would be the 18th C version of the artic or 16 wheeler would'nt it Stanley?
Ian |
Callunna
Revolving Grey Blob
3044 Posts
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 14:06
Weren't the blokes who ran these pack horse enterprises called Jaggers?*
I just looked it up on Wikipedia but there's no mention of it. Nor in my online dictionary. And flip me, it's not in my OED either. Where on earth did I dredge this info from? Was I dreaming?
*Wonder if Mick's ancestors had a horse called Jumpin' Jack Flash? |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 01/10/2007 : 17:38
No, I think you're right Heather. If I remember rightly it's a corruption of the German word Jaeger which I seem to think was hunter (long while since I did German). Webster (1913) says it is a pedlar or one who carries a small load. Ian, they were the heavy haulage of the day. A wagon like that could carry 8 tons and it was these sort of vehicles that Pickfords used when they started in haulage. The broad wheels were demanded by Act of Parliament, the theory was that they rolled the roads flat instead of cutting ruts.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
Early transport
