I'd hoped to upload the calendar templates and have them ready to go for orders. But we have problems.
1) the pictures are in every case, of such a small size and low resolution that I am told they will reproduce looking grainy and slightly out of focus. Generally to reproduce well, you need the originals of the pictures, not the very compressed versions that are uploaded to sites like Flickr and which most people seem to have submitted for the calendar. Most digital cameras will create an original of several MB in size. Some of the images I have are 40-50 times lower in resolution that that!
I currently will have to enlarge the images to fit a calendar page, rather than reduce -- the latter is what you want to be doing to preserve a nice image. Most images are not even 200kb in size, which is way too tiny. In general to reproduce well in a much smaller size just for my newspaper we need files at least 1MB in size and ideally much larger.
2) In most months I received two images, which was unexpected. Ideally you only want a single image per month and a single image for the cover. My fault for not giving an outline of what was needed, but I hadn't realised people were going to vary from the way pictures have always been submitted in the past, one a month with a collage for the month of August. I understand people thought there'd be no problems in having two images each month at Cafepress, but the issue isn't whether you can squeeze them in (as we could have done that in the past, too) -- it is that it is actually complex to do two images and the templates are designed to upload only a single image. I would need to go create separate collages for eight of the 'two picture' months months then upload the entire collage which is very time consuming (eg many hours of extra work using photo editing software that I don't actually own). I can do that once for the cover, but not for all the other months, so will take the winning picture.
So:
1) I am having to make some executive decisions which is: if I have two images, I will use the one that had the most votes or else, the one that is the best quality if the winning one is too small to enlarge and I don't get a fresh version (see below).
2) But the big problem is that I really, really, really need better versions of almost every image that was submitted -- meaning the original full size image if at all possible. I need the image to be at LEAST 1MB though and ideally at LEAST 1.5MB. I have tried a 700kb image as a test to submit, and even that has come back with a warning that it is too poor a resolution, and will look of poor quality. So the many images I have that are less than 200kb will really not enlarge to a calendar page. Those really need to come back as higher resolution.
If people see this, they can email me the images directly at karlinATcavaliertalk.com, replacing the AT with @, I will get this done as quickly as possible. I'd like to have this up and available in the next week, if people could mail me high res images by Friday the 31st.
1) the pictures are in every case, of such a small size and low resolution that I am told they will reproduce looking grainy and slightly out of focus. Generally to reproduce well, you need the originals of the pictures, not the very compressed versions that are uploaded to sites like Flickr and which most people seem to have submitted for the calendar. Most digital cameras will create an original of several MB in size. Some of the images I have are 40-50 times lower in resolution that that!
I currently will have to enlarge the images to fit a calendar page, rather than reduce -- the latter is what you want to be doing to preserve a nice image. Most images are not even 200kb in size, which is way too tiny. In general to reproduce well in a much smaller size just for my newspaper we need files at least 1MB in size and ideally much larger.2) In most months I received two images, which was unexpected. Ideally you only want a single image per month and a single image for the cover. My fault for not giving an outline of what was needed, but I hadn't realised people were going to vary from the way pictures have always been submitted in the past, one a month with a collage for the month of August. I understand people thought there'd be no problems in having two images each month at Cafepress, but the issue isn't whether you can squeeze them in (as we could have done that in the past, too) -- it is that it is actually complex to do two images and the templates are designed to upload only a single image. I would need to go create separate collages for eight of the 'two picture' months months then upload the entire collage which is very time consuming (eg many hours of extra work using photo editing software that I don't actually own). I can do that once for the cover, but not for all the other months, so will take the winning picture.
So:
1) I am having to make some executive decisions which is: if I have two images, I will use the one that had the most votes or else, the one that is the best quality if the winning one is too small to enlarge and I don't get a fresh version (see below).
2) But the big problem is that I really, really, really need better versions of almost every image that was submitted -- meaning the original full size image if at all possible. I need the image to be at LEAST 1MB though and ideally at LEAST 1.5MB. I have tried a 700kb image as a test to submit, and even that has come back with a warning that it is too poor a resolution, and will look of poor quality. So the many images I have that are less than 200kb will really not enlarge to a calendar page. Those really need to come back as higher resolution.
If people see this, they can email me the images directly at karlinATcavaliertalk.com, replacing the AT with @, I will get this done as quickly as possible. I'd like to have this up and available in the next week, if people could mail me high res images by Friday the 31st.
