As someone who professionally uses the end result of all you shutter-bugs I'd
like to highlight a few points that should increase your chances of getting
published or at least providing publishable material. As Bob points out a 4 MP
camera shoots about a 4x6 for magazine work but that can leave very few pixels
for cropping. Make sure you shoot a nice tight well framed shot of your
subject so the image doesn't need cropping. There is nothing we designers like
to do more than crop away the excess in photos and tighten up the composition.
Conversely, with the high mega pixel cameras you can give us a little extra to
work with. I've seen examples where two very usable images were extracted from
one original shot. There were enough pixels there so why not.
If you're not technically minded and don't know a mega pixel from a mega phone
or don't care, think composition. Composition is everything. Shoot pleasing
scenes, or good compositions, and your on your way.
Finally a technical bugaboo. JPEGs are lossy. That means they loose data and
introduce noise. Even at 100% quality. TIFFs and RAW files do not. If you
have the option, shoot in TIFF or RAW. If you must shoot a JPEG make sure it
is the highest quality setting you can shoot. And never save a file over and
over again as a JPEG. Each time you run that JPEG compression algorithm on an
image you introduce more and more noise. Trust me, with todays monitors all
those jaggies will be spotted. We know where to look to spot the little
rascals. If you're editing your shot in Photoshop, for example, save the shot
as a PSD or some non-lossy format as you work. Maintain the quality of the
data. JPEGs are the enemy.
The moral of all this, composition and quality will always catch the art
director's eye.
Chris Borgmeyer
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