Newbie of all Newbie Questions?

cokekiller

disclaimer: I am completely new at this and the newbie of all newbies. :-) I am the most basic user, share pics with family and print 4x6's.

I am very new to this. I have been reading (help and here) up trying to figure out the best workflow to post my photos.

My pics come out of my camera at 2304x1712 at 72 ppi

1st size (I will prob only be printing 4x6):
After reading through the help files, smugmug reall seems to push the fact that I don't need to upload my giant files from my camera. on this page it says longest side to 1500 px and save at .jpg quality of 8, 9 or 10.
http://www.smugmug.com/help/photo-storage

Sooo, I resized my pics to 1600x1200 (this seemed a good even ratio) at 72 ppi and saved as jpg 8. This seemed to give me fairly quick upload time and enough resolution (hopefully) for my 4x6's...

However in this post I read today Andy says:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=30347&highlight=color+effects
"I recommend loading your FULL files, all the pixels. Do not resize - counterintuitively, smaller prints need more res to print great, they are subject to much closer scrutiny than the biggest of big prints."

So I am a bit confused. I know the size vs resolution vs megapixel vs ppi vs dpi vs psd vs tif vs raw vs .jpg 10 vs .jpg 8 is crazy. I think maybe I missed something somewhere trying to understand it all. There is good info in help but it seems to be scattered around a bit...

Second is about photo correction and sharpening...
Since this I find is also a HUGE topic, keep in mind I am a dumb dumb beginner. Since I don't really know how to do this, I picked SmugMug b/c of the mention that they when I printed they would use the I2e with the auto color option picked. This would probably make my crappy beginner crap pics look somewhat presentable. Yay!

However, my uploaded pics still look crappy online though. I then went to use color effects on my pics to make them look nice online and a warning comes up and says if I apply this, it applies the color effect to the ORIGINAL? Weird, I thought the original never got touched???

So if I do color effects to make my online look better, and I do autocolor to print, won't the pics get processed twice then...Plus it seemed to me that you said the I2e does an infinately better job than I could ever do on my own (beginner/time wise). Does the online color effect use i2e? If so,when I print, if I applied color effect, should I choose true color to print?

Thanks in advance for any help clearing up my dumbness and confusion!!!

Andy

cokekiller wrote:

disclaimer: I am completely new at this and the newbie of all newbies. :-) I am the most basic user, share pics with family and print 4x6's.

I am very new to this. I have been reading (help and here) up trying to figure out the best workflow to post my photos.

My pics come out of my camera at 2304x1712 at 72 ppi

1st size (I will prob only be printing 4x6):
After reading through the help files, smugmug reall seems to push the fact that I don't need to upload my giant files from my camera. on this page it says longest side to 1500 px and save at .jpg quality of 8, 9 or 10.
http://www.smugmug.com/help/photo-storage

Sooo, I resized my pics to 1600x1200 (this seemed a good even ratio) at 72 ppi and saved as jpg 8. This seemed to give me fairly quick upload time and enough resolution (hopefully) for my 4x6's...

However in this post I read today Andy says:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=30347&highlight=color+effects
"I recommend loading your FULL files, all the pixels. Do not resize - counterintuitively, smaller prints need more res to print great, they are subject to much closer scrutiny than the biggest of big prints."

So I am a bit confused. I know the size vs resolution vs megapixel vs ppi vs dpi vs psd vs tif vs raw vs .jpg 10 vs .jpg 8 is crazy. I think maybe I missed something somewhere trying to understand it all. There is good info in help but it seems to be scattered around a bit...

For the most part, the first bits of advice are best. Upload the full size files, withOUT resizing them, if you can handle the uploading (larger files take a bit longer to upload). You have UNLIMITED storage, so file size on smugmug isn't a concern. Yes, you'll get *better* prints from larger files in ALL cases.

Second is about photo correction and sharpening...
Since this I find is also a HUGE topic, keep in mind I am a dumb dumb beginner. Since I don't really know how to do this, I picked SmugMug b/c of the mention that they when I printed they would use the I2e with the auto color option picked. This would probably make my crappy beginner crap pics look somewhat presentable. Yay!

However, my uploaded pics still look crappy online though. I then went to use color effects on my pics to make them look nice online and a warning comes up and says if I apply this, it applies the color effect to the ORIGINAL? Weird, I thought the original never got touched???

Your original on SmugMug *will* be altered if you use the color effects tool. No way around that.

So if I do color effects to make my online look better, and I do autocolor to print, won't the pics get processed twice then...Plus it seemed to me that you said the I2e does an infinately better job than I could ever do on my own (beginner/time wise). Does the online color effect use i2e? If so,when I print, if I applied color effect, should I choose true color to print?

Yes, they'll be auto'd twice. I don't recommend that. Our AutoColor is really very very good, we get near zero returns if this is used. You can provide me a link to some photos, if you wish, and I'll let you know what I think!

Welcome to Dgrin, too!

cokekiller

Ok..thanks...

So if I want to go back and reupload my originals (larger files), what is the process if they have the same names.

If I upload to the same gallery will it save over the old smaller ones

or...

Do I need to delete the old images and upload the new larger ones...

bwg

cokekiller wrote:

Ok..thanks...

So if I want to go back and reupload my originals (larger files), what is the process if they have the same names.

If I upload to the same gallery will it save over the old smaller ones

or...

Do I need to delete the old images and upload the new larger ones...

delete and re-upload

cokekiller

Ok...thanks for all the help and advice, I really appreciate it!