Capture it

Image Capture

There are different ways to capture an image whether it’s using a scanner or a digital camera. You must be aware of the resolution (ppi – Pixels per inch) so you are able to look at my previous blog and see the examples of pixels and resolution and whether something is a vector image or a raster image. You also must be aware of the storage whether that being computer memory, file size or even asset management. When using a scanner it has the task of capturing as much of it as possible. The majority of film is 35mm and scanning resolutions need to be high to be useful overall. A frame measures about 36x24mm and to enlarge this for printing at about 10 inches wide the scanner would have to work around 2,100ppi.

For most photographers the resolution is very important and although it is only one of the relevant image qualities including bit depth and noise suppression. Digital cameras pin down the optical resolution of a scanner from its specifications and all scanners include software that will interpolate its real measurements upwards and the manufactures of the scanners claim these higher figures.

   

When scanning you must be aware how to reduce the contrast so this means if the image is in high contrast you are able to change it so the highlights are weakened as it the overall contrast of the image. The colour gamut or the colour space like I’ve discussed in another blog is important and the three most commonly use are CMYK, RGB and Lab. Lab is the largest and it has much to recommend as it is working space as nothing is lost. 

When looking at the memory you should always try to find something over 1GB (gigabytes) for more storage. For example memory cards or a memory stick often has a large amount for you to store your work onto. Another example could be a CD or CD-R (writable) or CD-RW (re-writable). These are CD’s which you can store up to 650mb on each by using a CD writer and a program on your computer which could be Windows Media Player ect. There is also DVD re-writers which you could burn movies onto and there is around 5 GB or over 9 GB of storage on those. You could always have back up files such as a zip file. The pros are that they are widely used, cheap drives and fast the cons are that they are high storage costs, limited capacity and expensive cartridges. They are best used for short-term storage, sending images files to bureaux, printers ECT.