Picture Size in relation to a 5-4 monitor and 4-3 Projector.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

I've been putting shows together for a couple of months now, but haven't yet grasped animation. I managed to animate some pics but been unsure how I acheived it. So I bought Beckhams latest PTE tutorial and read lots of other items. I've now decided I need to go back to basics and re-size my pictures, didn't bother before just cropped and enhanced and converted to JPEG, my question is, my monitor is a laptop Samsung G15 with a 5-4 screen, my projector is a 4-3 or 16-9, what should I resize my pictures to to give a straight and an animated picture. I picked up that animated pictures should be larger than basic straight shots. Please be basic, my age warrants it.

Stearman65

[Lin Evans]

Animated images don't necessarily need to be larger than still images. This is only important if you are doing zoom-in's which exceed the 1:1 appearance. You can quickly determine the 1:1 appearance by temporarily choosing "Original" from the "Common" tab "Mode" selection on the Objects and Animations Page. When you switch on the "original" mode, pay attention to how close or "large" things look. That's how deep you can zoom in without using a larger image.

When you zoom in really close, you may want to choose a larger pixel dimension for your originals.

I would suggest you download my PZR AVI tutorial from the "Tutorials and Articles" section here:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7901

If you watch the AVI audio visual tutorial you will become an instant "expert" at creating pans, zooms or rotates. It's the first of the series and about a 64 meg download.

Best regards,

Lin

I've been putting shows together for a couple of months now, but haven't yet grasped animation. I managed to animate some pics but been unsure how I acheived it. So I bought Beckhams latest PTE tutorial and read lots of other items. I've now decided I need to go back to basics and re-size my pictures, didn't bother before just cropped and enhanced and converted to JPEG, my question is, my monitor is a laptop Samsung G15 with a 5-4 screen, my projector is a 4-3 or 16-9, what should I resize my pictures to to give a straight and an animated picture. I picked up that animated pictures should be larger than basic straight shots. Please be basic, my age warrants it.

Stearman65

[fh1805]

Lin has given you some good advice in his post above and pointed you to his excellent PZR Tutorial, but I suspect he hasn't answered one of the concern's that you appear to have. I am interpreting part of your post as a plea for guidance on how to pick an image size that will work on three different aspect ratios - 5:4 monitor, 4:3 projector and 16:9 projector.

And the short answer is - there isn't one that works well on all three. I build my sequences on a desktop system whose monitor has 5:4 aspect ratio. I play them back on a laptop with 16:9 aspect ratio and this is driving a projector with 4:3 aspect ratio. So which do I choose?

I build the sequences with the ultimate intention of projecting them. My projector's natural resolution is 1024x768, therefore I build the sequences to an overall image dimension of 1024x768.

I accept that when previewing or playing the sequences on the 5:4 monitor I will get a black band top and bottom. When playing them on the laptop I accept I will get a broader black band at left and right. But when they are projected they look as I intended they should.

Now, my Nikon D70 DSLR is set to shoot at 3008x2000 pixels (3:2 aspect ratio) whilst my Nikon E2100 Coolpix shoots at 1600x1200 pixels (4:3 aspect ratio). How do I factor these two into all of this?

I either set my images on a background or overlay them with a "windowed mount" mask. (You can see an example of the "windowed mask" approach here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....showtopic=8127). If I need to use images from both cameras in the same sequence then I judiciously crop those from the Coolpix down to a 3:2 aspect ratio. This I will do either in Photoshop if I intend to place them on a background or, more commonly, simply by placing them behind the 3:2 windowed mount.

So what size do I resize to? I use Photoshop Elements v5 and set the "Constrain proportions" option under Image Resize and then resize landscape orientation images to 1024 wide and portrait orientation images to 768 high. To save time I actually do the resizing using File...Process Multiple Images...

That just leaves us with the issues of zooming and panning.Let's assume that your image is a 4:3 aspect ratio image and it is this that you want to zoom into. In order to preserve the displayed image quality, at no time do you want there to be fewer than 1024 pixels of the image available to fill the screen. If your original image is 1024x768 then any zoom in is going to lose quality straight away. If your original image is 2048x1536 then you can zoom in a considerable amount before you have fewer than 1024 of these image pixels available to fill the width of the display. Exactly the same argument applies to a pan. To retain image quality you need to have a much higher image resolution so as not to lose any of that quality.

Whenever I do a zoom or pan, I always use the original image size in order to preserve as much detail as possible throughout the animation.

Hope this has been helpful to you.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Lin has given you some good advice in his post above and pointed you to his excellent PZR Tutorial, but I suspect he hasn't answered one of the concern's that you appear to have. I am interpreting part of your post as a plea for guidance on how to pick an image size that will work on three different aspect ratios - 5:4 monitor, 4:3 projector and 16:9 projector.

And the short answer is - there isn't one that works well on all three. I build my sequences on a desktop system whose monitor has 5:4 aspect ratio. I play them back on a laptop with 16:9 aspect ratio and this is driving a projector with 4:3 aspect ratio. So which do I choose?

I build the sequences with the ultimate intention of projecting them. My projector's natural resolution is 1024x768, therefore I build the sequences to an overall image dimension of 1024x768.

I accept that when previewing or playing the sequences on the 5:4 monitor I will get a black band top and bottom. When playing them on the laptop I accept I will get a broader black band at left and right. But when they are projected they look as I intended they should.

Now, my Nikon D70 DSLR is set to shoot at 3008x2000 pixels (3:2 aspect ratio) whilst my Nikon E2100 Coolpix shoots at 1600x1200 pixels (4:3 aspect ratio). How do I factor these two into all of this?

I either set my images on a background or overlay them with a "windowed mount" mask. (You can see an example of the "windowed mask" approach here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....showtopic=8127). If I need to use images from both cameras in the same sequence then I judiciously crop those from the Coolpix down to a 3:2 aspect ratio. This I will do either in Photoshop if I intend to place them on a background or, more commonly, simply by placing them behind the 3:2 windowed mount.

So what size do I resize to? I use Photoshop Elements v5 and set the "Constrain proportions" option under Image Resize and then resize landscape orientation images to 1024 wide and portrait orientation images to 768 high. To save time I actually do the resizing using File...Process Multiple Images...

That just leaves us with the issues of zooming and panning.Let's assume that your image is a 4:3 aspect ratio image and it is this that you want to zoom into. In order to preserve the displayed image quality, at no time do you want there to be fewer than 1024 pixels of the image available to fill the screen. If your original image is 1024x768 then any zoom in is going to lose quality straight away. If your original image is 2048x1536 then you can zoom in a considerable amount before you have fewer than 1024 of these image pixels available to fill the width of the display. Exactly the same argument applies to a pan. To retain image quality you need to have a much higher image resolution so as not to lose any of that quality.

Whenever I do a zoom or pan, I always use the original image size in order to preserve as much detail as possible throughout the animation.

Hope this has been helpful to you.

Hi Peter

That is exactly what I wanted to know, although the figure of 1024 pixels I'm unsure of, in Elements 5 I have been using 72ppi on an image without animation and allowing the original ppi which could be up to 320 to be used, actually It's just clicked I think you are referring to 1024x768 ratio not ppi. Therefor is it correct to use a higher ppi for animation and a minimum of 72ppi for straight shots.?

PS See you Saturday, Len & I will be there.

Yachtsman1

[xahu34]

..... Therefore is it correct to use a higher ppi for animation and a minimum of 72ppi for straight shots.?

PS See you Saturday, Len & I will be there.

Yachtsman1

Pixels per inch (ppi) is a measure for printing and irrelevant for image presentations on screens or using beamers.

See here or here!

Kind regards

Xaver H.

Munich

[fh1805]

Xaver got in before me. He's absolutely correct. If you are preparing images for projection the only thing that matters is to have the correct dimensions as expressed in pixels x pixels. The dpi value has no meaning for projected images.

But consider this: at 72dpi an image that is 768 pixels high will print at good quality to over 10 inches high; at 720dpi that same image will start to pixellate at just over one inch high.

Now that I am posting sequences for downloading on a regular basis I leave the dpi set high as an additional protection against copyright theft. Anyone who wants to can "grab" my image but they will not be able to do all that much with it before it pixellates quite markedly.

[xahu34]

Hello Peter,

changing the resolution (in ppi) while leaving the pixel dimensions invariant can be done with Photoshop, but with IrfanView, as well. If you then restore the image (with new ppi-value) as PNG you even do not have any loss by an additional compression. Furthermore, I am pretty sure that there are tools available which can be used to change the meta data of images without opening them. So, I do not see how unusual resolution (ppi) values help to protect the images.

Best regards

Xaver

Munich

[Lin Evans]

Hi Peter,

Actually no. The dpi is simply an EXIF header tag to tell the print device how many dots per inch or pixels per inch to print the image. The dpi has no relationship to anything else. An image which is 1024x768 pixels will print in an identical fashion whether the dpi is 72 or 720. The image display size changes in Photoshop when you change the dpi without resampling because the closer together you display or print pixels the smaller the image will be at a fixed dpi but an image with 1024x768 pixels still has the same number of pixels. Actually, unless you are printing on a dye sublimation type printer (300 or 400 dpi) the actual print from an inkjet for top quality prints is determined by the print engine. For example, if your image has an EXIF tag which is 72dpi and you print it on an Epson inkjet at the highest quality, it will automatically be interpolated to 720 dpi regardless of the size you ask the printer to give you. For a Canon or Hewlett-Packard this figure is 600 dpi.

DPI is informational only for print or display devices which interpret it. For example, a two megapixel image or 1600x1200 pixels printed at 300 dpi will print 5.33 x 4 inches without interpolation. Printed at 720 dpi it would be 2.22 by 1.66 inches (1600/720) X (1200/720). But if it was tagged at 720 dpi the print device would interpolate it automatically to the print size asked for so no pixelation will happen unless you greatly exceed the native size of 5.33x4.0 inches assuming some loss in image quality above the 300dpi magic number which printers are used to using for dye sub type printers. Bottom line is that there is no way to "protect" your image by assigning an EXIF header calling for a particular dpi.

Best regards,

Lin

Xaver got in before me. He's absolutely correct. If you are preparing images for projection the only thing that matters is to have the correct dimensions as expressed in pixels x pixels. The dpi value has no meaning for projected images.

But consider this: at 72dpi an image that is 768 pixels high will print at good quality to over 10 inches high; at 720dpi that same image will start to pixellate at just over one inch high.

Now that I am posting sequences for downloading on a regular basis I leave the dpi set high as an additional protection against copyright theft. Anyone who wants to can "grab" my image but they will not be able to do all that much with it before it pixellates quite markedly.

[fh1805]

Lin,

Thanks for correcting my misunderstanding. It just goes to show that we never stop learning.