The Digital Insider

I came across this story earlier in the week and wanted to share it with everyone. It really demonstrates the power of digital photography and the internet to do good when used correctly. (Apologies to all my friends in Southern California that are die hard USC fans for writing a favorable article about the Buckeyes’ fans).

On September 1st, the Ohio State Buckeyes opened their season at home facing the Youngstown State Penguins. A long time Buckeye fan, Michelle Montgomery was thrilled to attend the home opener and witness her beloved Buckeyes dominate the Penguins, winning 38-6. On the way into the stadium before the game, Michelle found a digital camera in the parking lot. She viewed the pictures on the camera’s digital display and saw photos of a father and son meeting Brutus Buckeye, the OSU mascot. Reluctant to trust campus lost and found to find the camera’s rightful owner, Michelle decided to take matters into her own hands.

Michelle took the camera home, downloaded the images to her computer and then emailed them to 14 of her closest friends and fellow Buckeye fans. She asked them to view the photos and if they did not recognize anyone to pass them along to other friends and Buckeye fans. Hundreds of emails later, John Montgomery opened his email, opened the photos only to recognize himself and his 10 year old son, Noah, posing with Brutus. He was estatic to learn that his camera was safe and Noah was thrilled as well to have the proof that he did meet Brutus Buckeye.

“It shows the power of the Internet, e-mail and the Buckeye network. It’s amazing how many Buckeye fans are out there,” said John, a 1986 Ohio State University graduate.

When I read this story I thought it really captured how good people combined with technology can achieve things that would have not been previously possible.

For the past few months now I have been reading an online newsletter called Photojojo. The newsletter is published twice and week and I would highly recommend everyone check it out. They are constantly profiling new and cool things you can do with your digital photos, whether they be taken on a digital camera or photos you had converted to digital format everyone can find something new to do with their photos at Photojojo. The idea for Photojojo was born when two friends Amit and Kara realized they both had a love for digital photography and knowledge of all sorts of fun things to do with digital photos, but no way to share this knowledge.

“You probably own a digital camera and you’ve probably taken a bajillion photos with it. You may have printed a few. Well, it turns out there’s a whole world of things you can do with your photos and with your camera that nobody ever told you about. We find the most kick-ass photo tips, DIY projects, and gear and bring them to you. Turn a photo into a mural at home in 5 minutes, print your friends’ faces onto cupcakes, or get a bottlecap that turns any soda bottle into a tripod… subscribe and we’ll show you how.”

Topics tend to run the full gambit of digital photography which is something I love about the newsletter. Just in the last week they have profiled such things as major photography exhibits around the U.S., a way to turn your digital photos into a music video and a guide to creating your own photo journal books. In addition to the newsletter articles, you can also visit the Photojojo store and purchase all sorts of great photography related products. The site is useful, but keeps a light fun tone.

One of the best parts of the site is the forum where readers can post and discuss a wide variety of digital photography topics. Congrats to Amit and Kara on a great idea and keep up the good work over at Photojojo!

At ScanDigital I am constantly working with our customer service representatives to understand the questions our customers are frequently asking. One of the more common topics of conversation relates to the confusing world of resolution and how this is measured. Hopefully this post will shed some light on the topic.  My apologies in advance for a somewhat technical post, but I promise the next one will be much lighter reading!

First, let’s start with the commonly used terms: DPI, PPI and Megapixels. These terms are not as confusing as they may sound. In the common vernacular (and even on our website) we refer to resolution in terms of DPI or “Dots Per Inch”. What we really mean when we refer to DPI when speaking about digital images is PPI or “Pixels Per Inch”. DPI’s origin lies with traditional print methods which use patterns of dots to render photographic images on a printed page. While pixels on a monitor are square and in contact with the adjacent pixels, printed dots have space between them to make white, or no space between them to make black.

A digital image is simply a certain dimension: “x” pixels wide by “y” pixels tall. If you divide each dimension by 300, you will have the size of the image at 300ppi. When a digital image is prepared for print the pixels are converted to dots. Dots have spaces between them. 300 pixels become 150 dots and spaces, so 300ppi becomes roughly 150dpi and 150dpi is the accepted standard for printing photographic quality images.

However, it is also important to remember that everything is relative to viewing distance. 150dpi (or 300ppi) is accepted as photo quality because the average person cannot see the “dots” at a few inches away. When you move the viewer further away from the printed material, lower dpi is acceptable. A huge billboard might be printed at only 40dpi but no one notices because everyone is 50 yards away from it.

When we talk about viewing images on a monitor 72 dpi is often discussed. Technically speaking, referring to 72dpi should really be 72ppi because it has nothing to do with printing. On a computer display, a 72 pixel by 72 pixel image should take up about one inch of space on the screen. (This of course varies based on the size of the monitor and what resolution it is set to.) As a result, whenever we are asked about resolution on a customer call it is important for us to understand the intended use of the digital files. If a customer is going to only use them for digital viewing on a monitor or television, then our higher resolution option is completely unnecessary and will not be at all noticeable on a monitor. However, if the customer wishes to order large reprints than the higher resolution scan may make a huge difference in the print quality.

So, what about megapixels?

Converting dpi or ppi into megapixels simply requires a little math.  A megapixel is equal to 1 million pixels and is a measurement of area.   So lets assume a customer has a bunch of slides or negatives that they want to convert to digital format.  How many megapixels will the resulting image be?  A 2000 ppi scan of a negative or slide results in an image with an approximate size of 1,900 x 2,840 pixels or 4.7 megapixels (a very high quality image).

I hope this helps explain some of the confusion surrounding these terms!

I have been thinking a lot lately about the impact of digital photography on the development of the social web. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace for better and for worse allow people not only to create online profiles, but what have become full online personalities. These personalities are defined, in part, by what people are writing about themselves, but more often defined by the photos and images individuals are posting of themselves, friends, family and activities. While there is some negative impact that comes from this (college seniors being cut from job applicant pools based on inappropriate photos) for the most part I view the impact of digital photography’s involvement in the social web as a very positive one.

Groups of individuals can link and bond in ways that were never possible before. A couple of weeks ago I finally read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, to me the social web really is creating the long tail of socialization. Allowing groups of individuals with very distinct tastes or interests to find each other and share their common bond. Digital photos only help to accelerate the speed at which these groups can develop, both by making it easier to identify new members with a common interest and also by facilitating better information sharing capabilities. This ability to share and community build allows these groups to truly capitalize on the long tail effect.

In thinking about the topic I came across a posting by Dennis Dunleavy on his blog “The Big Picture”, he offers interesting insights to this topic as well. For those that are interested the article can be found here: http://ddunleavy.typepad.com/the_big_picture/2007/08/the-role-of-the.html

As the social web matures, it will be exciting and interesting to see the impact of these new social communities. Let me know your thoughts on the topic!

Amazing developments continue in the world of digital photography. James Hays and Alexei A. Efros of Carnegie Mellon University released a new algorithm today professor and fourth-year PHd student at Carnegie Mellon released a powerful new algorithm today which creates the ability to fill-in blanks or replace unwanted parts of a digital photo. The algorithm draws on a huge database of more than a million images from the internet in order to seamlessly fill in the missing areas of incomplete photos.

Reasons for wanting to repair these photos span from a patch of bright light affecting the image or an unwanted person, shadow or object that is negatively impacting the image.

The algorithm is amazing in that it provides a number of different options to complete the photo allowing the user to select the one that they find most suitable. The example below demonstrates the power of the new algorithm.

More details can be found at the following page: http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/scene-completion/

Very interesting and ground breaking technology!

About a week or so after the highly anticipated release of Apple’s iPhone, I had a chance to really sit down and test the device. I must admit, while Apple has a track record of developing phenomenal and revolutionary products and personal devices, I thought this latest jump into the cell phone/PDA/all-in-one device market was going to take at least a few rounds before Apple really nailed it. Overall on the first try they created something that truly takes an all-in-one device to the next level. The entire design is focused on the user and the Apple design team was able to remove itself from the mindset of what is perceived as required for one of these devices (i.e. an actual button keyboard) which lead to a product that truly maximizes its usefulness and adapts for each individual function.

One of the areas I was most impressed by a was the iPhones Digital Photo functionality. For this function the iPhone uses the entire screen and images can be viewed both from a horizontal or vertical orientation (something that can change on the fly due to a built in gyroscope). With the flick of your finger you can scroll through photo after photo or with a pinch in you can zoom in on any photo. Photos can be easily uploaded to the device from you computer or from the web. Its amazing to think that for the first time ever it is totally reasonable to think someone’s entire life long photo collection could be loaded on one device and go with you wherever you want.

The video below gives a great, quick overview of the iPhones photo functions. Have a quick look, its a pretty amazing device!

This week at ScanDigital we have been processing a number of large slide orders. These orders span our customers’ entire lives and we continue to be surprised by the diversity of the actual slide mounts and formats. This lead me to research the history of slides which I thought would be interesting to share with everyone.

The Kodachrome process, introduced in 1935, was the first commercially successful amateur color film. It produced much brighter color transparencies than previous formats. The film initially was used by professionals, but it gradually gained wider popularity. Some amateurs were using Kodachrome for family snapshots as early as 1940 with many utilizing 35 mm roll film adaptors with common 4×5″ “press cameras.” Color print film at the time had a very high cost of film and processing and short print life. Ektachrome, developed in the 1940s was also a popular format. Ektachrome, is often considered an inferior film to Kodachrome which has better archival qualities and color palette, Ektachrome’s main advantage was that it could be developed on-site at smaller photo labs throughout the country and it could be developed more quickly than Kodachrome.

Amateurs who could afford slide film and projection equipment used it extensively until about 1970, when color print film began to grow in popularity. Despite this, even through the 1970s and into the 1980s the format was prevalent with individual photo enthusiasts producing slides created from their images. While the process was somewhat expensive at the time it was viewed as both the best way to preserve and share your images.

Commercially, slides were prominent until about 1995, color transparencies were the primary photographic medium used for publishing, and were widely used in commercial and advertising. Digital media have since gradually replaced transparencies in many of these applications. The use of slides for artists submitting to juried shows or applying for solo exhibitions, applying to art schools or for residencies (or the like), however, is still nearly universal for a number of reasons, among which is the actual or perceived lack of color fidelity in digital media. photography, reportage, sports, stock, and nature photography.

Anyway, thought I would share my research with everyone. In the last week or so we have seen slides produced spanning approximately 50 years from the mid 1940s through the early 1990s which has been quite interesting!