Recently married....new to MP...quick question

[Mrs.Mejia]

Hi everyone - MP seems like a GREAT way to put together my own, personalized wedding album. I even heard a local radio station in San Diego talking about it today. Anyway, I'm wondering how my photos will turn out, if I'm using the ones given to me by our photographers.

We decided to go with the standard film photogs, rather than digital - so they uploaded all of our pics onto a total of 9 CDs...2 rolls of film per CD!! So when I view the pics on our computer, the quality isn't nearly as good as digital, obviously. This is a major concern of mine with the finished MP product. Will I just have to keep the images somewhat small? If so, how small - less than a 4x6 size pic? I do not know how large the files are, they're on my home comp. and I'm at work right now.

Any advise is much appreciated, thanks!
Calista

[irusan]

Hi Calista,

Congratulations on the wedding!

MyPublisher is a great way to create some inexpensive picture books. If you used a professional photographer, then the images should be sufficient quality for use in BookMaker.

There are a few reasons the images don't look good on your monitor. However, it all really boils down to the fact that your monitor displays images at a low-resolution setting.

Create your book and, as you add images, just keep an eye on the color of the frame border. If the border color is blue, then the image will print well. If it turns red, it means that the image will be enlarged too much and you will see what's called "pixelation". Little squares of color instead of a smooth color.

Some of us get rather geeky about the whole thing and care about stuff that bores most of the world to tears (I am one of those geeks) and you'll read some rather detailed forum posts. Don't worry too much about those!

If there are two rolls of film per CD, those will be pretty high-resolution images. The one thing you need to check is if the high-res versions are in JPG format. They may be TIFF. If they are and you need some help/information on converting from TIFF to quality JPGs for your MyPublisher book, just post another question on these forums.

HTH,

Rob

[Mrs.Mejia]

Hi Rob,

Thanks sooooo much!!!! That was very helpful info - I wish I was 'geeky' in this computer world...I try to learn as much as I can, and would love to have all the answers. I have a love/hate relationship with my computer though, hahahaha!

About the resolution on my comp., what would you suggest I try to set it at? I'll try changing it around tonight after work. Hopefully that'll be a world of difference.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get started on my album this week - can't wait!

Thanks again
Calista

[irusan]

While you can change your display resolution (1280x1024, 1600x1200, etc.), you typically can't change the actual screen resolution.

Images display on your monitor at 72DPI (in some few cases, it's 96DPI) and that's all you are going to get. The quality of your monitor has much more to do with how well the pictures display.

Adjusting the display resolution is an area where the adage "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" applies. How large is your monitor? If it's less than 19" in size, I wouldn't go too high as the images will appear very small on screen.

The best thing to do is to play around with the settings until you find a setting that looks good to your eyes.

If you still have the user's guide for your monitor, look through that for help in adjusting brightness, color, contrast, hue, etc. That will have a much more pronounced effect on how well you see the image. If you don't have the guide, use Google or Yahoo to search for your monitor on the manufacturer's site.

Most of the time it's a simple step-by-step wizard that you walk through.

Good luck,

Rob