After all the months of discussion on digital vs. traditional images
for magazines, I thought perhaps there might be those on this forum
who would be interested in Lapidary Journal’s directions on the
subject. It seems most of the magazines I work for are beginning to
switch to digital as their preferred format, so for those of you who
have digital images, it seems a green light has appeared. These
guidelines are probably reasonably close to what most magazines will
be looking for, but to be sure it’s always wise to contact the editor
of the magazine you wish to be published in and ask for their
particular guidelines.
From Lapidary Journal’s guidelines:
The largest possible images are preferred; the image size for
printing must be 280 dpi, so we need something at least 280 dpi at a
“real” size of approximately 4" x 5", to be safe.
Images can be sent via e-mail in JPEG, GIF, TIFF, or MIME file
formats; files exceeding 1.5 mg should be compressed using Stuffit, or
sent on disk rather than e-mail.
Images sent via disk are preferred in Macintosh file formats; using
QuarkXpress or Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop; in EPS or TIFF
formats; on SyQuest or iomega zip or jaz disks, or CDs. Non-Macintosh
formats may or may not be convertible.
Hi Everybody, Everyone in the USA has heard of the recount and in my
office we have = the reshoot. How many times do we take this picture
until it comes out = right? (grin) We have finally decided that
computers and digital cameras absolutely have a personality unto
their own. We are trying to move as fast as we can to finish getting
the website up but the picture taking with a digital camera is taking
an enourmously long time. I do want to thank those with the
on taking pictures because it has helped solved problems
we have come up with. Yesterday we were taking picture of faceted bi
color tourmalines that just would not come out looking like they
really looked (in color) We stopped and took pictures of other
stone. About an hour later we tried to take pictures of the bicolor
tourmalines again and the pictures came out perfectly with nothing
being changed in the shadow box or lighting.
We then tried to take pictures of faceted pink tourmaline. It seems
that the beauty of the stone (all the facets) is taking away from the
beauty of the actual picture. The picture looks very black. We have
changed lighting,covered the lights, put in a mirror nothing seems
to help. Are there any suggestions? Another problem we have is that
some of the the very velvety black drusys come out with a green cast.
This is not the case if I use my scanner. We have changed filters
and lighting and everything imaginable.
The digital camera I am using is a 2 megapixal photo smart C500. I
must say that Hewlett Packard has very good telephone technical
support and will walk you through many problems. Another interesting
thing that happened with this camera yesterday was that fact that it
focused after the picture was taken. (This was a first and the
camera is working). Any help with taking pictures of the pink
tourmaline and black drusy will be appreciated. Thank you for your
support, Diane www.sweetgemstones.com
This is a really low-teck solution - but it works for me. Just place
the stone on the glass plate of a scanner and cover it with a piece of
black velvet ( you might need to clean the cloth with something to
get the lint off) black denim works as well. Then scan the object and
color correct using something like PaintShopPro.
Diane, digital photography is still in early stages, so you may be
asking questions that have not been resolved by some of the cleaver
persons out there vs. some of the problems presented with the regular
film cameras.
This also puts you into the trailblazing role, so maybe you should
keep notes as you go, (some photographers keep track of each photo
like this while in the field.)
I see where someone else mentioned Olympus and you mentioned h-p. I
believe each are worth the money they cost. Olympus has done a lot of
pioneering and has some good software (which really needs to be
considered whenever using anything digital.) I’ve seen images created
digitally that are absolutely amazing, but the RAM and the software
requirements for this kind of quality is high.
A 300-dollar-class digital camera, or a 500-dollar-class camera will
provide good results, but the higher the cost, the more of a feature
you will get. I wish I could recommend a resolution for you, but I
can’t and I hope you will share with the list what you discover.
To Jimmy and all, I have gotton some replies from another list I
belong to on how to solve some of my picture problems. When I have
tried them out to make sure it works I will relay the to
the list.
There is a large learning curve and trial and error on the type of
website that I am putting up which is why the site has taken so long
to put together. It is almost at its final stages.
I do thank you for recommending taking notes. If I had I would be
able to easily duplicate a picture of a faceted stone that came out
perfect. I wanted to change backgrounds but cannot remember the exact
conditions that were present when the picture was taken, so I will not
be able to change the background without some more trial and error. I
will now start taking notes.
This work and business is just getting through the undesirables to
get the results you want. I am now working very closely with some
wonderful ethical, honest people which has made the challenges and
difficulties of this website lots of fun.