The Elfor Drop

The Elfor Drop by R.R. Haywood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely loved it, engaging from beginning to end.....where is book 3!

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Google photos, the new joke

Google photos appears to have become a joke, because of a problem on my phone I didn't have a photo I wanted to look at stored locally so I tried to use Google photos for some basic edits. 

Every single feature I touched said "please pay some money". 

Google come on, we love you but we already pay you through the torturous volume of advertising. 

Can Stock Photo...made me giggle

It seems that 6 weeks ago I applied to Can Stock Photo (no link, why would I?) along with a number of other agencies, Getty, Adobe etc. I had honestly forgotten about their guys so was quite surprised to receive this message :

Yes a stock photo site managed to send an email with a broken logo. They require a photo ID? Indeed they do, every site appears to need a copy of a passport and if it was part of the application process then it was included, if it wasn't part of the application process I didn't include it. The question is, do I want to wait a week to apply again to Can Stock Photo when they send broken emails, clearly have a flawed application process and don't communicate for 6 weeks when all the other applications were done and dusted in a matter of days. Let me see now. No, this level of unprofessionalism isn't worth my time, but it is funny.

The Worldship Humilty Short Review

The Worldship Humility by R.R. Haywood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely fabulous, the author keeps producing books that are entertaining and the characters are engaging.

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Photo Resolutions & Aspect Ratios

I thought I would write this down while I thought about it, photo sizes are in inches.

 Most printed photos are in 3:2 aspect ratio (4x6,6x9, 8x12, 10x15, 12x18, 16x24, 20x30, 2446). 

 Some are 5:4 (4x5, 8x10 and 16x20).

And 5:7 (5x7)

Obviously there are others but the implication is for "normal" photo prints that 3:2 is the correct ratio to use and every photo that might be printed either needs to be tested that cropping to fit doesn't break the print or as a work around should have a border added. 

The simplest resource I found on this was over on Shootproof.

Next is the issue of what resolution is required for different sizes, let's ignore anything truly odd and go for standard sizes and most printing talks about 300 dpi which I have worked from, higher pixel dimensions are fine and lower can be used (this is simple multiplication!). The reality is that this if often higher than what is actually required hence in brackets is a minimum, why? Well some commercial printers output at anywhere from 200ppi so in brackets I have included the resolutions many sites suggest are acceptable.

4x6    :    1200 x 1800 (1000x1500)

5x7    :    1500 x 2100 (1250x1750)

8x10  :    2400 x 3000 (2000x2500)

16x20:    4800x7200 (2448x3264)

....so you can see it is easy to extrapolate up.

There are lots of explanations but I liked this one.

For larger prints : 

A2 (420x594mm) 4970x7016 (min 2480x3508) - 16mp camera will do the job.

A1 (594x841mm) 7016x9933 (min 3508x4967), 20mp camera.

A0 (841x1189mm)  9933x14043 (min 4967x7022), 24mp camera.

Of note above these sizes viewing distance may change the actual resolution required (lowering it!).

Remember that on screen DPI is normally listed as 72 ppi and helps reduce output file sizes.