Best picture size for ACI?

[OSU Beavers]

Eveytime I get a new camera it is trial and error until I find the megapixel picture size and file size that looks good in ACI. Too high a megapixel and I get wavey roofs, to low and it is grainy.

I find anything more than 4mp and detail gets lost as ACI trys to cram too many pixels in to that little photo box. File sizes over 1mb also cause grief and even crashes.

So what is the Best picture size and file size for ACI?

 

[Randolph Kinney]

I use 200k with JPG compression.

 

[Pat Butler]

I don't use ACI, but the concept is the same for any program- What you see on your monitor isn't necessarily what will print. You might see wavy lines because your monitor is very low resolution as compared to your printer. That typically happens with lines that are close to a 45 degree angle.

I shoot for between 250 and 300 pixels per inch on my photos which would allow the photos to be printed out and still look nice. You can then use jpg compression to reduce the file size.

 

[Couch Potato]

Eveytime I get a new camera it is trial and error until I find the megapixel picture size and file size that looks good in ACI. Too high a megapixel and I get wavey roofs, to low and it is grainy.

I find anything more than 4mp and detail gets lost as ACI trys to cram too many pixels in to that little photo box. File sizes over 1mb also cause grief and even crashes.

So what is the Best picture size and file size for ACI?

Like Pat said, don't try to judge it by how it looks on your particular monitor while still in ACI. Print some to judge the quality, or at least make it a PDF. You are probably using too high a resolution if it looks good in ACI.

One of my favorite features in ClickFORMS is the photo optimization that sets the photo resolution based on the size of the cell on the page. (Does them all at once, or individually.) Maybe someday ACI will do that too.

 

[Edward OConor]

I always use the lowest quality setting on the camera. How much detail do you really need in a 3 x 5 photo? You need more mega-pixels for the larger prints 8 x 10 and larger.

 

[Pat Butler]

The ideal pixel count just depends on what you are planning on doing with the output. A 4x6 photo at 300 pixels per inch for printing would be comprised of 1,200 x 1,800 pixels= 2,160,000 which is roughly 2 megapixels.

If you initially photograph something that you want to enlarge then you need to consider the enlargement percentage. Let's say you take a distant picture of a house that you'll eventually want to use by cropping out the surrounding areas. If you need to enlarge that house by 200% then your intial photo needs twice as many pixels worth of data to maintain the same resolution. So you'd need a 4 megapixel camera for the same photo described above if you crop out data and enlarge it.

The screen resolution of a computer monitor varies upon a lot of factors, but is useless for seeing how well am image will print. I'm certain there are many appraisers using images that look great on the monitor but will print out looking crummy. Doesn't matter though if the client will only be viewing it on a monitor.

 

[Couch Potato]

The screen resolution of a computer monitor varies upon a lot of factors, but is useless for seeing how well am image will print. I'm certain there are many appraisers using images that look great on the monitor but will print out looking crummy. Doesn't matter though if the client will only be viewing it on a monitor.

That distinct possibility is why I use a higher resolution than is actually necessary for printing. There is also the possibility the person viewing on a monitor will have it zoomed to 150% to make it easier to read the text. I'm sure my files are easily 300MB larger than necessary for printing, but I use the higher quality optimization so that I'm sure the report looks good to all who see it.

Acrobat is a great place to optimize the file size because it is what the client will use. Optimizing in Acrobat before signing is probably the best way to be sure your report looks its best.

 

[Pat Butler]

But in the end, you can't exceed the resolution of the monitor. Someone with a typical 17" monitor is likely to have about a 15" wide screen. If you have a video card set at 1,280 x 1,024 then your monitor's resolution is only about 85 pixels per inch! (1280/15).

There's nothing you can do to get a 300 pixel per inch image to display at the same size and resolution as what it will print out at. Everything you view on that monitor will only be at 85ppi maximum.

Zoom in to see what you want, or zoom out-- but it will still be displayed at 85ppi! Your monitor's abilities don't suddenly change.

 

[Couch Potato]

Yes Pat, but if the number of pixel per inch in the report drops below 85ppi due to zooming in, the image does distort. Greater than 85ppi does not help, but less than 85ppi hurts tremendously in that case.

 

[Blue1]

My V705 Kodak is set at 1.1 MP. Seems to work pretty well with ACI. Oh yeah...plus I get something like 4,500 photos on the 2 Gig card that came with it.