A short course held at the Guildford Institute 20th March 2018

1. Digital Images & Data
To Save or Not to Save?
Michael Sleigh
Photographer at Polypodphoto

2. An introduction on how to
cope with digital images
and digitized data

3. You may have hundreds of digital images on
your camera cards, dozens on your
Smartphone and thousands of digital files
cluttering up your hard disks.
We will look at options for putting some order
into your collections of digital images and
files.

4. How to cope with your digital images & data
• On your computer:
• Think about what you want to keep and what can be deleted.
• Make a list – this can take time but is well worth the effort. Consider
what family members or others may want to view in 5/10/20 years
time!
• Clear out old files and delete unwanted or duplicate images.
• Implement a consistent file naming system.
• Establish a folder structure with main headings and then sub-folders
containing specific material.

6. What to do on a Tablet or Smart Phone
• Move all the digital images off the device into a folder on your computer.
• It will be easier view photos on a computer screen. Sort the images into
which you want to keep and which ones can be binned.
• Then carry out the process of image naming and their allocation to specific
folders.
Once you have imposed some order into your collection
of images and data files on the computer its time to
consider which ones are to be saved (backed up) onto
external storage.

7. Backing up Digital Images & Data
Its important to ‘Back up’ in case of the failure of your computer
Hard Disk or loss through fire/theft etc.
Back up options:
• External Hard Disk
• CD/DVD
• USB flash drive
• Cloud Storage - Dropbox. GoogleDrive. OneDrive.
• Image Databases – Flickr. Photobucket. ImageShack.

10. Now that you have sorted, culled and secured (by backing up) your images you
may want to go onto modifying, enhancing and then circulating your photos to
others.
There are a number of software programs that will enable you to ‘improve’ your
photos and to produce file sizes and formats to suit
the planned end use.
Each end use should have a file size and format tailored to produce the best result,
be it for Social Media, Photo Library, photo book or even for a large exhibition
sized print.
The subject of image size, image resolution and resulting file size can be complex
but a basic understanding of the procedures will help to achieve good results.
We will use Photoshop Elements as an example of what most packages will offer
as a means of altering image size, resolution and file size.

11. • The image size (or pixel dimensions) of an image is a measure of the number of
pixels along an image’s width and height. For example, your digital camera
may take a photo that is 1500 pixels wide and 1000 pixels high. These two
measurements indicate the amount of image data in a photo and determine the
file size.
• Resolution is the amount of image data in a given space. It is measured in
pixels per inch (ppi). The more pixels per inch, the greater the resolution.
Generally, the higher the resolution of your image, the better the printed image
quality. Resolution determines the fineness of detail you can see in an image.
• Although a digital image contains a specific amount of image data, it doesn’t
have a specific physical output size or resolution. As you change the resolution
of an image, its physical dimensions change, and as you change the width or
height of an image, its resolution changes.
• The relationship between image size and resolution in the Image Size dialog
box of Elements can be seen in the next examples. As you change one value,
the other two values change accordingly.

15. The following gives a quick guide on file type and resolution to
be used for images:
For most situations a JPEG file is suitable. @ 72ppi for Social Media.
min@200ppi for inkjet printing. @300ppi for litho printing.
Use PDF format files for sending images or text via the internet.
Use TIFF files as ‘Master’ files for archiving.
There are other file types available but JPEG is the most widely used and
compatible format. JPEG files are compressed and the more compression
used the lower the quality of the resulting image.

16. A look at setting up a Digital Camera to achieve the optimum file
size and picture quality / resolution for the type of image use
required:
The camera (or Smart Phone) can just be set to ‘Automatic’ but there are two
settings that can be made which give more control over the resulting image
(most cameras will allow these to be set)
The ISO setting controls the sensitivity of the chip in the camera and the
Image-recording Quality setting allows the image to be saved (to the card)
at a range of quality settings.
Setting the ISO at a low speed requires there to be good lighting of the subject, setting
at a high speed allows shooting under dull conditions but results in a grainy image.
The Image Quality setting allows at low quality for hundreds of images to be recorded
onto the card, at a high setting fewer images can be saved but they will be at a
higher quality.

19. Cameras can give the option of saving as a RAW and/or JPEG file – unless
you are an expert use the JPEG option and set a quality level suitable for the
images end use.
Download the saved images on the card to a computer on a regular basis,
using an image name and folder system to allow for easy location at a later
date. Purge the cameras card regularly.
A computer does not have to be used but allows much greater control over
the final image . You can, of course, just take the card to a shop and have
prints made there and then, or upload your photos to social media direct from
your smart phone.
The fear is with the way people now take hundreds of photos at a time but
few of them are considered shots, most will never get looked at again and
probably will be lost to future generations.

20. Michael C Sleigh
www. polypodphoto.co.uk
© 2018