DigitalBuzz - Digital Life

Digital Printing is the process of producing digital images on physical surfaces such as paper, photographic paper, film, cloth and plastic. Using this technology, one can print directly without using any intermediate mediums, such as a film negative or a plate-making machine. This is not only becoming the most popular way to print and photograph, but is also environmentally friendly since it avoids all the chemicals that traditional photography uses.

Digital printing interconnects printing presses to computers. The first step in digital printing is formatting the images on a computer. A wide range of mechanical processes is eliminated with digital printing including the need to make films and plates.

Digital printing is classified into two major divisions depending on the means of printing. These divisions are variable imaging and direct imaging. Variable imaging uses the laser printer, inkjet printer or digital press for printing. In direct imaging, electronic files are used to create films or plates for printing. Computer-to-Imagesetter, computer-to-plate (commonly known as digital plate making) and computer-to-plate-on-press are the various digital imaging techniques.

Digital printing technology has many advantages over traditional printing including faster turn around times, cost effectiveness and accurate proofing. Filmmaking is not required in digital printing, and, you can personalize documents. It is capable of producing high definition images. Digital printing is the fastest and most affordable printing technique for a quantity of 500 prints or less. It is often used in preparing cards, multi page documents, brochures, sell sheets, ad slicks, flyers, video boxes and CD packaging.

Digital Printing provides detailed information on Digital Printing, Digital Photo Printing, Digital Printing Companies, Online Digital Photo Printing and more. Digital Printing is affiliated with Public Relations Firms.

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Well, we’ve all seen the advert, but that’s not what I want to talk about, so get that out of your head straight away. No, let’s think about what many call the “Queen of Arts” - namely painting.

Have you ever wandered around a huge Art Gallery and marvelled at the works by Tintoretto, Raphael, Constable or any master painter who has produced huge canvasses? Then again, we have many fine examples of beautiful artwork in cameos and miniatures. In fact, in all sizes between these two extremes the evidence of creative genius can be found down through the ages.

However, it’s patently obvious that the correlation between size and creative genius is poor. Mere size on the premise, “never mind the quality feel the width” is not the prime element of a masterpiece. Yes we are fascinated by the Sistine Chapel, for example, by the sheer scale of the paintings, but it’s the genius of the painter that draws the eye. It’s also true though that the artist tugs at our heartstrings by the wealth of detail that working in a large format permits.

In the same way, large format and medium format cameras have traditionally been the working tools of professional photographers for many, many years. In a previous article, I suggested that there would always be room for film, especially for users of the larger formats.

Now, we get to the nub of the matter, because in digital parlance, the wealth of detail evident in the larger formats is expressed as the size of the file. Unlike physical dimensions which cannot be changed once the work has been committed to the recording medium, be it film or indeed canvas size, the digital file is not so restricted.

Of course, when image size is changed from the original during, say, image compression, there is generally a loss in quality e.g. jpeg Even the use of a lossless transformation doesn’t add anything to the image, it merely preserves what’s there.

However, there is a revolutionary item of image manipulation software that does totally “change the picture” It comes as a Photoshop plug-in with Photoshop 6.0 or higher and it’s called “Genuine Fractals” and here is what the originators claim,

“It’s an indispensable tool for photographers, graphic artists and digital imaging professionals, Genuine Fractals enables you to create resolution-independent images from any size file and lets you print superior quality enlargements without any degradation in image quality”

By saving your digital image with this package as a very small stn file, you can create lossless files of up to 70Mb and beyond. After saving and re-opening this file in Photoshop, Genuine Fractal kicks in and you can easily produce files of a specified size

I was stunned by this software and began to wonder what the impact might be for both digital photographers and medium/large format professionals. Of course, as already stated, this increased size does NOT put extra information into the shot. There again, neither does making a 67 dupe of a 35mm slide improve image quality and many photographers still do that when submitting to libraries.

Digital photographers may get even more benefits by beefing up the file size using Genuine Fractals, before printing out enlargements. This could be very useful for Wedding Photographers who want the convenience of using a digital camera, but are unhappy about the quality of enlargements often requested. Using Genuine Fractals may save time effort and money by eliminating the need for a film backup camera.

On the other hand, it may be that Genuine Fractals may produce the best result with photos captured from film and then scanned, because noise in the original image is not removed when enlarged, in fact it will be more obvious. This means that mid-range digital camera shots are likely to fare worse on enlargment than film shots captured with 10 million pixels+

With a new version Genuine Fractals 3.5 just released, it could be worth a test and could be a worthwhile investment too. So, if you want to explore this a little more, get a copy of Amateur Photographer for 23 October 2004 and read their review of this exciting software.

You can get a free test copy of the software itself from this link: http://www.dcp-systems.co.uk

Why bother with a medium format camera if 35mm caressed by this Software will do instead? Oh I know I’ll get lectures from purists for even suggesting something so daft, given superior lenses and better optics, but for some people that may be just overkill. If this article has opened up the possibility of a better working method for some freelances, that’s all that matters.

So don’t please run around telling your mates that size does not matter and that I’ve assigned medium format cameras to the dustbin of history. No, I’m just shining the spotlight on that funny old coin digital/film and giving it a flick in the air. Who knows how it will land? At least I’ve got a 50-50 chance of being right!

About The Author

One of a series of articles by Robert Hartness, successful freelance and author of an hotlinked, flip-over, e-book, published on the web in October 2004. It offers a step-by-step guide to those on the threshold of freelance photography and is illustrated with 40+ published photographs. Acclaimed as a great reference source for serious freelancers. More information and order link - http://www.cashfromyourcamera.com Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/10/prweb168698.php

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For a long time, digital camcorders have been limited in all sorts of ways by the fact that they have to use removable media. The camcorder has to be big enough that the media can fit inside, you have to buy the media and remember to carry it around with you, and you can only film as much as can fit on your media. Now, though, these restrictions are fading away: we’re entering the era of the tapeless camcorder.

What do I mean by ‘tapeless’? Well, basically, I’m talking about hard disk camcorders. These are digital camcorders that work the same way as your iPod or Tivo - they have a hard disk drive inside to store the data on. Modern video compression combined with the ever-increasing capacity and ever-declining physical size of hard disks has finally made them practical for these kinds of portable uses. The massive success of the iPod has forced down the price of portable hard disks, and digital camcorders are the next thing to benefit.

Using a hard disk camcorder is just so much easier. All you need to do is charge it up, point it at what you want to film, and switch it on. They’ll film for hours and hours before they get full - generally around 50 hours, but you can get more if you want. When you’re done, just plug it into a computer (or use a Bluetooth wireless connection), save the movie to the hard drive, and you’re ready to go again.

Of course, hard disk camcorders are also much smaller than other digital cams, and can be almost any shape their designer feels like, which generally servers to make them much nicer to hold and use. If you’re not sure what to get, I can recommend the JVC Everio line as the original and still so far the best, but it’s still early in this market yet.

John Gibb is the owner of digital camcorder sources
For more information on digital camcorders check out http://www.digital-camcorder-data2k.info

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