Judge sharpness by file size

With a series of photos of the same subject in hand, you can assess what shot is sharper without ever opening a file.

Figuring out which photo in a series the sharpest is can be a difficult task. If you have five shots of the same subject, you usually open each in turn in the image editor, all of them closely examine, and then to a judgement call as to which is the goalkeeper.If you must work quickly, can this approach quite frustrating, not to mention time-consuming. There must be an easier way! And indeed there is.

Without ever opening the file you can solid decisions about image sharpness. Both
Windows and Macintosh computers provide you with all the information you need by simply the folder with your photos to open and view some of their basic data.

Eyeballing sharpness is all a matter of size? file size, that is. The larger the file, the crisper the image. If you shoot in JPEG mode with your digital camera (which you usually, unless you expressly to TIFF or RAW), the files are compressed in the camera so that they are not too much space on your memory card and loads fast on your portfolio website. Beautiful, sharp detail is more difficult to compress than softer, duller images. So, the resulting file for a slightly sharper image will be a little bigger.

Under Windows, open the folder with images and pick the detailed view, as shown. In the size column shows how big each picture. In this example, IMG_1005 and IMG_1006 are of the same topic, but IMG_1006 (1,803 KB) is a bit sharper than IMG_1005 (1,775 KB). Windows allows you to preview the image in the box Details in the left column. All you have to do is click once on the file name and the example for that file is displayed. This makes it easy to check or compare photos of the same subject.

This process on Mac OS X is not much else. Choose column view, as shown, and then click the picture that you want to examine. Finder will generate a thumbnail, along with the size of the image and other details. Click a different image to compare. File size again, inform you which shot in the series is sharper.

This topic assumes that you usually more than one frame for each topic shoots; I recommend this highly. For photos of people I shoot always at least two frames, just in case someone looks away, her eyes close, or else contorts her face in one of the shots. But even for landscape and other compositions not people, I shoot more than one frame, and then choose the absolute best version of each topic. I don't like the camera as a constant for each shot. And sometimes, things happen in the background that I am not in the small LCD monitor of the camera message.

Multiple shots to make sure that I come away with the best picture possible. And if you can get away with finding the sharpest version without opening a single file, why not do it?

Source: O'Reilley | Online wallet
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