The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 52 No 2 July 2013

Up the MB path
Your Computer
So you've taken these great images (either JPG or raw) and you've downloaded them onto your
computer. Of importance now is the image size and resolution. You cannot add pixels to an image you
have taken. When you enlarge an image you are making the pixels bigger not multiplying them. This
can cause the image to become blurry (pixelated) when you try to enlarge it beyond 100%.
Resolution relates to the clarity and crispness of the image and you want to have the best resolution
for the medium in which your images w ill be displayed. A computer screen is backlit, making images
appear crisper. A piece of paper is duller, which means that an image has to have a higher resolution to
achieve the same look as on screen . Therefore the suggested resolution for a screen image is 72 PPI, and
300 PPI for a printed image.
There are many different photo-editing programs (eg . Photos hop). To resize your jpg images, go to
'image size' and look for Pixel Dimension, Document Size or Image Size. Pixel Dimension tells us how
many pixels are in the image and the Document Size tells us the size of the printed image based on the
chosen resolution.
You then need to alter the resolution depending on your needs. Notice how the height and width
pixels change depending on the level of resolution required. Also be sure to look at the actual size of
the image in centimetres.
Sharing Your Image
Most requests for an image of your work will dictate the required image size . For The Journal of
Australian Ceramics we require images to be high resolution JPG (300 DP!); approx. size 220 x 150
mm. This size image file can be emailed or shared via Dropbox or youSENDit. Do not email TIFF files as
they are uncompressed files and tend to be a lot larger than JPG files.
Files size is measured in 'bytes'. For our purposes let's keep this simple by illustrating this
measurement from smallest to largest.
1 kilobyte (KB) = 1024 bytes (tiny)
1 megabyte (MB) = 1024 KB (big)
1 gigabyte (GB) = 1024 MB (massive)
An image suitable for online use is usually a smaller file because of its lower resolution (72 PPI);
an image for printing is larger (300 PPO.
THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS JULY 2013 91