Optimizing Image Quality

The images you see on your computer are greatly affected by the quality of your computer display and its current settings. In fact, on a poorly calibrated monitor, even this bright yellow text on a black background can be rather difficult to read. There are various degrees of calibration possible, but here's a simple adjustment for monitors that can have a significant effect:

Basic Calibration

First turn up the "contrast" control on your monitor to its maximum. ("Contrast" controls the absolute white level -- the apparent brightness of white.) Then you'll adjust your "brightness" control down from the maximum. ("Brightness" controls the absolute black level -- the apparent brightness of black.) You want to turn down the brightness until a near-black object is just barely visible against absolute black. This will produce the brightest white and the darkest black without losing any detail. (This adjustment also applies to television screens.) The text inside this box below is almost black but it should still be visible -- only VERY barely visible:

This text is very dark and should be just barely visible
(and not easily read) on this black background.

(Note that for LCD displays it usually is not possible to adjust brightness and contrast. In fact, this text might appear gray-white at many angles.)

Video Settings

In addition to your monitor settings, you'll also want to set your video device to display the maximum number of colors possible.

Other settings that can have a significant effect are gamma and color temperature. Gamma settings are particularly troublesome on the web since different systems have different default gamma setttings. In particular, Macintosh and Windows handle gamma differently so that images calibrated for one will appear darker on a Windows machine and lighter on a Macintosh. (Swell.)

If you're interested in further calibration of your display, I refer you to your system's color synchronization support (like Apple's ColorSync), your computer's help system, other resources on the web, and third-party tools and applications.

Viewing Full-Size Images

The images that are directly accessible on this site have been reduced in resolution and compressed a little more to help decrease downloading time at the cost of lower image quality. However, you can still download the full-size images if you wish. Just click on any image to display the medium-sized version and look at the address displayed in your browser's window. It will look something like this: "http://crimdom.net/photos/2000/glenn&michele/med/DSCN0912.JPG"

The "/med/" portion refers to a directory containing the medium-sized images. You can change this part to "/large/" and press enter to download the full-size image.

Be aware that the full-size images are large (600-1200K). This can take a while if you're using a modem connection (56K or less) and won't be all that fast even with broadband access since my DSL service is limited to 240K on the outbound side.

Getting Prints Made

Okay, there are two ways to proceed here: (1) The "do-it-yourself" method or (2) the "point, click, and pay" method:

(1) Doing It Yourself -- If you have a photo-quality capable printer you can download and print the images yourself or you can send the digital image to a photo print service on the web. However, please note: you should download and use the full resolution versions of the images you wish to print (not just the medium size) because the extra resolution and lighter compression will make a great deal of difference in printed output quality. (See above for instructions on how to download the full-size versions.)

(2) Point, Click, and Pay -- There are a number of print service providers on the web (see the list below). I've looked at each a little bit and I chose "Ofoto". I've already uploaded all of the full, high-resolution versions of these images to their site so all you have to do is click on the link below and follow their instructions. You can select which images you would like to have printed and what size and quantity for each. They charge 49 cents per 4 x 6 print plus a shipping charge per order. You can also choose larger print sizes.

One note: many of the images have been cropped and don't have exact 4 x 6 dimensions. They will give you the option to zoom in on just a portion of the frame or to print the entire image as it is and just leave the remaining part blank. I would suggest turning off the "crop & zoom" feature and print the entire image. I wish they provided the ability to print irregular sizes but I haven't found anybody who'll do that yet.

Click below to order prints from Ofoto:

Michele & Glenn's Wedding

Halloween at the Wellers - 2000

Halloween at FileMaker - 2000

 

Update (11/6/2000): Uh oh, I just came across this test of digital print services and Ofoto doesn't rank all that great in terms of print quality. And unfortunately the best for quality (Spector) doesn't have an English web site yet. Click here for this print quality comparison test. (You can click the names of each of the providers this person tried to see comparison photos of the original image vs. the printed image.)

There are a number of places that you can send digital images to have them printed. Here's a list I grabbed from another site. Note that if you choose a different provider than "Ofoto", you'll need to download the image files (as described above) and upload them yourself:

(For more information on getting digital prints made, check out this article.)

Any questions or comments? Email: (send to "chris" at "crimdom.net")