Nikon Digital Learning Center / Discuss
Current Discussion
Latest: 7 hours ago
Latest: 10 hours ago
Latest: 18 hours ago
Latest: 24 hours ago
Latest: 31 hours ago
Latest: 2 days ago
Latest: 2 days ago
Latest: 2 days ago
Latest: 2 days ago
Latest: 3 days ago
Latest: 3 days ago
Latest: 7 days ago
Question on portrait pictures
hikingtime says:
Let me start by saying I don’t like doing portraits, but I did.
I did my 2 children and a family portrait for a friend (4 people). I did them all in landscape (horizontal). My wife questioned me because ALL portraits are done in the portrait (vertical) way. My answer was when I rotate the picture for PP I get a warning about loosing resolution due to rotating the picture thus I had them printed in landscape. My friend said was surprised when he opened the envelope and the pictures were in landscape, he was expecting the typical portrait style picture. He still liked the pictures and will keep them.
My question is how much resolution is actually lost when rotating the picture for PP (I have photo shop 7)?
#2 why are 90% of portraits done in the vertical style?
Posted at 7:38AM, 20 December 2007 PDT ( permalink )
TonikJDK 
says:
"#2 why are 90% of portraits done in the vertical style? "
Because your subject is more vertical than horizontal. Say a chest up portrait...that part of the person is taller then they are wide.
I would not rotate the shot, I would crop it to a vertical size.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
Get Closer! says:
I'm confused by the loss of resolution you are referring to. Simply shooting a vertical vs. a horizontal will make no difference in the resolution that the camera captures. Also, simply rotating an image in Photoshop will not reduce resolution. You would have to be cropping and/or resizing the file to lose resolution.
One thing that can happen in some file browsers (Windows Explorer for instance) is that if you rotate a jpeg image (vertical or horizontal), it will automatically "Save" the rotated version, overwriting the original file. Since it is saving a jpeg as a jpeg there would be more compression added, possibly degrading the image quality and causing more compression artifacts to be visible, and the file size would normally be slightly smaller, but that still would not change the resolution of the image.
As to "ALL" portraits being done vertically, that IS not true and SHOULD not be true and reflects limited creativity in approaching a subject. There should be no conditions predetermined for a shot ahead of time unless it's a commercial job and the client has spelled out specific criteria he/she needs for the work.
Large group portraits will often be horizontal because the group is wider than it is tall. Environmental portraits of an individual, often shot with wide angle lenses, often are horizontal to convey information about the subject beyond simply what their face looks like.
Be careful and suspicious of any absolutes. They are death to creativity.
Originally posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
Get Closer! edited this topic 5 months ago.
hikingtime says:
Thanks for the ifo guys, the resolution loss is not in the camera but in photo shop and picture viewer (windows), I remember a window popping up that said "by rotating this phot the resolution will be changed" (not exact wording) then I checked box don't show this message again.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
Get Closer! says:
There has to be something else going on. Simply rotating the image in Photoshop will not change resolution. For that matter, nothing you do in Photoshop changes the file until you do a Save or Save As. Have you tried making a copy of a photo and experimenting with that? (Never play with the original, only copy of the image.) Try rotating it back and forth and each time look at the Image Size box and see if there is actually any change.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
Pragmagraphr says:
Check to see if this message only appears on JPEGs with a width/height that is not divisible by 8 (or possibly 16). JPEG, although a lossy format, can be rotated any multiple of 90 degrees, or mirrored, without any loss of information. Completely lossless... Unless (!) it has partial partail block at the edge. These blocks need to be either cropped, or the image needs to be reencoded (with loss).
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
Otima says:
what is a good online resource for learning on how to do good portraits?
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
ssmiley1 says:
i was also wondering what is up with the windows picture preview thing when you rotate. i just decided to tilt my head to make the picture decision and then do the actual rotating in photoshop.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
Pragmagraphr says:
ssmiley1 spoke:
But if you did the rotating in ps instead of the Windows pricture viewer, in fear of loss, you are probably worse off using ps.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
hikingtime says:
Get Closer,
Yes I always save my work as something else and by playing and resaving in ps you loose quality so if I do any pp I do it all at once and only save it once. If I don't like the results then I start over with the orig. My reason for asking was the fear of loosing quality of the picture by rotating, thus when I did the 3 portrait shoots I did them all in landscape, and 1 person was suprised when they got their prints because they wern't in the v ert. format. All pictures were shot in JPEG
Thank you all for the feed back.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
Get Closer! says:
When you edit (rotate, etc.) a photo and then save the changed version, if you save it as a jpeg, it will be compressed to whatever Quality level you specify. This will be lossy compression--pixels are actually thrown away and then have to be made up through interpolation when you reopen the file because the resolution has not been changed unless you also resized the photo. More compression will mean a higher probability of compression artifacts showing in your photo when reopened.
If the photo you are working on is a jpeg to start with, then saving it as a jpeg will cause it to be compressed even more than the original capture. And every resave as a jpeg will make it even worse.
The best, and most efficient workflow would be to open the original file and immediately (before making any changes) do a Save As and save the new version as a tiff. Then you have escaped the downward spiral of lossy compression degradation at every resave, and don't have to keep going back to an original and starting over either. The tiffs will be larger, but storage capacity is pretty cheap these days.
Once you have the new tiff version, you can begin making your edits and after every few changes just save the work, overwriting and updating the tiff. This lets you constantly back up your work as you go so if you have a crash you don't have to start over; you only lose the last few steps that you had not saved yet. And since it's a tiff file, there's no data loss with the repeated saves.
At whatever point you have done everything you want to that file except the output specific steps (sizing and sharpening, which should be your last two steps) save that edited tiff as a Master Edit. Then anytime you ever want to do anything with that photo, just open the Master, size it, sharpen it, and you're done. At that point, if you need the file to be a jpeg for sending as an email or posting to a web gallery, just save the sized and sharpened version as a jpeg, and you'll still have the tiff Master file as well.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
obeychad says:
Quite often I take a couple shots in a series of portraits that are horizontal. Sometimes I even prefer it to the vertical. Rules are made to be broken and as Get Closer said "Be careful and suspicious of any absolutes."
In fact, this portrait ignores a couple "rules" and follows some others. Is it a successful portrait? I don't know but I like it.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
avi8tor4fn says:
The photo is one of those "pretty women in contrast to industrial background" and this one works. If you cropped to eliminate the fence to the left, you still have a pretty women, but the background may as well be faded to black. Except for cutting off her fingertips, it works. I agree that we don't need more rules.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
avi8tor4fn says:
Hikingtime, I haven't seen that message ever pop up in Photoshop when rotating. It does appear in MS Windows explorer at times. That is my usual go-to for rotating pics, even though I know it is recompressing the Jpeg's. It seems to pop up on high-res scanned images, or large file size jpegs I saved from a Photoshop file. I never see it from jpegs right off the camera which are usually around 400k.
In any case, if you want to rotate, or do anything in Photoshop, open your photo and do what you like WITHOUT SAVING. When you are satisfied with your final result , save the file with a different name in any format you like. Often times I just add a "-001" to the end of the file name so the altered version remains next in line to the original. If I save another version, it becomes -002 and so on.
To perserve your original, just never save an altered version that over-writes the original. Also, don't save it more than once as a jpeg, if possible. Every time you save it as a jpeg, you lose a little. If you do rotate in Explorer view, it will resave, recompress the jpeg. I do it anyway without worry but after that, I never alter my original. That way I can always go back to it and start over. As you learn Photoshop-a neverending process-this becomes more important.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
hikingtime says:
Avi8tor
thanks for the info,
I never change the original I make a folder within the ori folder and call in enhanced. This folder has all pp pictures.
Posted 5 months ago. ( permalink )
blogrodent says:
Rotating an image in photoshop (or anything) will change its dimensions. If you have a 5 pixel wide image by 10 pixels high, rotating it will only change it to a 10 pixel wide image with 5 pixels in height. In either case, you're still only talking about 50 pixels total.
Resolution often refers to the output of a given device. Many monitors output images at 72 dots-per-inch (DPI). If you're viewing an image at 72 dpi resolution, you should be seeing 72 pixels for each inch of "dots" on your monitor (though this too can be murky because each dot on a monitor is actually made of a red, green, and blue dot).
When you're thinking about printing, though, you're going to use a printer to output your image. If you're printing to a 300 dpi printer, for every 300 horizontal pixels in your image, you'll get one inch of horizontal ink on your paper.
I often see discussions of pixels, dpi, and resolution use these terms interchangeably with no regard to what's actually going on and it can be very confusing to the novice. Heck, it's confusing to non-novices. In fact, I might even be confused right now....
Rich
Posted 3 months ago. ( permalink )
Feed – Subscribe to Nikon Digital Learning Center discussion threads
Flickr Blog | About Flickr | Terms of Use | Your Privacy | Copyright/IP Policy | Report Abuse
| Deutsch | English | Español | Français | 
| Italiano | Português Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! All rights reserved.
You are viewing a mobilized version of this site...
View original page here
