| Author |
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Brigitte
Guest
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 Posted:
Fri Nov 11, 2005 5:41 am Post subject:
Cropping without degradation? |
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Hi Group,
Is there a free software program available that will allow me to crop photos
without the resulting photo being degraded?
Thanks,
Brigitte
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jcdill@gmail.com
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Nov 11, 2005 5:41 am Post subject:
Re: Cropping without degradation? |
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Brigitte wrote:
| Quote: | Hi Group,
Is there a free software program available that will allow me to crop photos
without the resulting photo being degraded?
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If you are talking about lossless jpeg cropping, a cool tool that does
this is called betterjpeg.
<http://www.betterjpeg.com/>
It offers the following jpeg editing features:
# Lossless Transformations - Rotation, Flip
# Lossless Crop (free, fixed aspect, fixed size, predefined and
user-defined aspects and sizes), composition guidelines (diagonals,
golden mean, rule of thirds)
# Highly Customizable Lossless Date/EXIF Info/Text insertion (position,
font, size, color, background, language, format, etc.)
# Advanced Lossless Red Eye Removal (anti-aliasing, adjustable size,
sensitivity, darkening)
# Copy/Paste to external editor and back for local retouching without
full recompression (lossless)
# Batch image processing
# Multi-level Undo/Redo
# Metadata preservation
# Compression optimization
HTH
jc |
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MarkČ
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Nov 11, 2005 5:41 am Post subject:
Re: Cropping without degradation? |
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Brigitte wrote:
| Quote: | Hi Group,
Is there a free software program available that will allow me to crop
photos without the resulting photo being degraded?
Thanks,
Brigitte
|
As long as you save the cropped photo in a non-lossy format such as .tif,
you won't "degrade" it.
If you re-save any jpeg image after cropping (or any other save nia a photo
editor) as a jpeg file again, you re-compress the file, and lose some
data/photo detail in the process.
If you are concerned with this, always save your edited images as a tif file
or other non-compressed, non-lossy format.
-M2 |
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Bob Williams
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Nov 11, 2005 5:41 am Post subject:
Re: Cropping without degradation? |
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Brigitte wrote:
| Quote: | Hi Group,
Is there a free software program available that will allow me to crop photos
without the resulting photo being degraded?
Thanks,
Brigitte
|
I don't think any photo editor degrades an image simply by cropping it.
If you also resample the image and/or save it in .jpeg format you will
experience some degradation depending on how much you resample or how
highly you compress the image.
A popular FREE editor is http://www.irfanview.com
Bob Williams |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Nov 12, 2005 5:40 am Post subject:
Re: Cropping without degradation? |
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| Quote: | But I know from past experience that once I crop a picture,
if I want to print it, the photo isn't going to be the same quality
as it was before I croppped it.
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Yep, sounds to me like you are just enlarging too much for the number
of pixels you have.. 1600 x 1200 is going to give quite a nice 6x4
print, but let's say you crop half of those away, and then try to print
to the same size, you will be down to about 120 pixels per inch. At
that point, the pixels are becoming visible, and on a detailed subject
it will look pretty bad. For a good photo, you really want to be
around 200 pixels per inch or more.
It's not that tricky to work out, Just use the longest dimension - in
your case 1600 pixels, being printed to say 7".. that equals 1600/7 or
about 230 pixels per inch. No problem there.
But if you cropped it down to say 900 pixels and print it to 7"
again... 900/7 = 128 pixels per inch. Not so good.
300 pixels per inch equals very good quality.
200 ppi = good quality.
100 ppi = not good, maybe just ok for a soft portrait or something not
very detailed.
So your images, at 1600 x 1200, can only be cropped a little before you
will run into 'visible pixels'.
As for free programs to do this stuff - one probably came with your
camera! If not, try Irfanview. Or watch computing magazines, they
often throw old versions of ACDSee and ThumbsPlus away for free. Or
maybe Picasa? I've heard fairly good reports about it. All image
editors and browsers should be able to crop without 'damage', but
remember that if you over-enlarge, you will get in trouble. And to
minimise image degradation, save as TIF files, or make sure you are
saving the JPG files at highest quality settings.
You might want to spend some time over at www.scantips.com if this is
all a bit puzzling.
| Quote: | If some of the things I've said are confusing to you, it's because
all these numbers and ratios and relationships of those numbers
make my brain hurt, even trying to explain it like this is difficult. :)
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Don't worry, we've all been there once. Some of us remember it more
vividly, that's all!
(O; |
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