Nothing But Net
Company web sites are where the action is in today’s
high-stakes MarCom game. But with a playing field as unlimited
as cyberspace, it’s difficult to gain an advantage over
the competition. Dynamic web-visuals are all-star players
in the contest for web audience. High-impact photos will slam-dunk
your message home and score big points with potential customers.
But unless the photos and other graphics have been sized
and formatted correctly, visitors to your web site will be
frustrated by slow-loading images and halting navigation.
Studies show that web site visitors have little patience and
will exit within seconds rather than wait for an image. Talk
about a delay-of-game penalty!
Pixel Perfect Performance
Most computer monitors can be set to a choice of pixel display
configurations. Commonly the choices are 640x480, 800x600
and 1024x768. These numbers refer to the pattern of the screen
pixels and their dimensions. In other words, set at 640x480,
your screen will display objects using a grid consisting of
480 rows with 640 pixels in each row. As you prepare your
images for web and e-mail use, remember that monitors display
images using one screen pixel for every image pixel. To size
a web or e-mail image, you simply figure out the pixel dimensions
of your screen—how many pixels wide by how many pixels
tall—and then determine how much of that screen real
estate you want your image to cover.
For example, if your image size is 640x480 pixels, it will
consume an entire 640x480 set screen. I think everybody has
endured the frustration of opening an e-mail image only to
find that they can see only part of a picture that is too
big to fit on their monitor. Improper image size (pixel dimensions)
is the cause.
Prints Charming
There is an ad currently playing on TV that shows consumers
complaining about the lack of prints in digital photography.
Since snapshots can be downloaded and viewed on any computer,
fewer image files (the replacement of film) make it to a lab
for printing. My prediction is that most photo labs are doomed
to go the way of the blacksmith and typesetter. The good news
is that desktop photo printing is improving with each new
model on the market. Unless you need oversized display prints,
today’s home and office printers do a very good job.
So in the words of Snow White, “Some day your
prints will come.” And you will control the quantity,
quality and size of your charming prints from your very own
home/office printer. But getting your screen image and printed
image to match exactly is a fairytale without a happy ending.
 Color
Match—The Impossible Dream
Color is a highly variable, subjective thing. Two people can
look at the same color and call it different names. Color
management is a system that allows different digital output
devices to communicate in such a way that image color remains
consistent. Whether your output is a computer monitor, scanner,
printer or projector, color management is the dream that the
candy apple red on your screen will not change to pretty in
pink on your print. But since the color range and intensity
you see on a monitor will always be greater than what is possible
in a print, be prepared for some disappointment.
The key to color management is understanding that a computer-generated
image and a print can never look identical, no matter how
much you tweak it. The reason is similar to why slide transparencies
and photo prints can never look exactly the same. A print
or any piece of flat art is viewed with light bouncing off
its surface (reflective art), while a monitor shows us an
image based on transmitted light of glowing red, green and
blue phosphors (RGB).
Ansel Adams once said, "The negative is the score, the
print is the performance." Even with the advent of digital,
this is still true. Everybody experiences the problem of prints
that do not come out of the printer as "orchestrated."
And honestly, color printing the old-fashioned way in the
darkroom involved more guesswork, trial and error and was
every bit, if not more, frustrating. Even armed with a color-corrected
image file (today’s equivalent to a negative), inks
and paper selection can change everything, just like in the
old film days.
 But
there is lots of good news. Inkjet desktop printers, using
proper archival inks and photo-grade papers, can produce a
quality print at a fraction of the cost (and your time) it
takes in a lab. Most editing software programs come with a
built-in print test. This pre-press type preview allows you
to print and compare thumbnails of your image in a range of
hue and saturation settings on a single sheet of paper.
A recent check on the latest model desktop printers shows
the prices going down while features such as user-friendly
interfaces are increasing. Don’t you just love technology?!
Suzanne Salvo and her husband/partner Chris are co-owners
of Salvo Photography, an international award-winning studio
based in Houston, TX. Specializing in location shooting, assignments
have taken them to nearly 50 countries. Typical projects include
annual reports, ad campaigns and capabilities brochures. For
more information, visit their web site at salvophoto.com.
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