See your TC in RC Touring Car!

[GregV]

You can e-mail a picture with a description to me. The image must be 300dpi to be considered.

gregv@airage.com

[rvrrun]

GregV,

300 dpi, CMYK, and what size?

3"x5"?

Thanks,

MS

[hpiguy]

What do those numbers mean?

My digital camera takes good pics but I have no idea what all those dpi, and other things mean.

Help a brother out.

[GregV]

The next RC Touring Car Magazine is in the works and we are looking for Readers' Rides. Here is how you can get in:

Send a sharp, uncluttered, well-exposed color photo of your Touring Car (no Polaroids), and a brief description to Readers' Rides TC, RC Car Action, 100 East Ridge, Ridgefield, CT 06877-4606 USA. If we publish your photo we'll send you a RC Car Action decal sheet. Remember to write your phone number and address on your description letter and your name on the back of each photo you send.

[The_Ne-Go-She-Ate-r]

Can we send the pic through email?

[rvrrun]

hpiguy,

The dpi=dots per inch or pixels per inch they are the same. This is the # of pixels in a square inch.

The CMYK (cyan,magenta,yellow,black) is the color space used in four color print which is how the magazine is done. I'm pretty sure your camera will take a 72 dpi image in the RGB (red,green,blue) color space but I might be incorrect.

The 3"x5" is the physical size of the image.

MS

[Nairb]

dpi doesn't really matter and can be changed easily anyway. If your camera can take big, good quality images (at least megapixel, I'd say), then it'll be big enough. All you need to do is open the picture in Photoshop, click Image>Image Size... and change the resolution box to say 300 or above. The only difference will be the printed size (out a a quality program like Photoshop); the higher the resolution, the smaller a picture will be when it's printed. There will be no loss of quality if you only change the resolution (don't change the size in inches or pixels, that will screw it up). Ok, for a picture to be 300 dpi and 3x5", it must be 900 x 1500 pixels. Get it? Computer monitors can only display around 72 dpi, so some cameras can only shoot at that resolution, but we can work around that, like I said.

About the CMYK vs RGB thing... Ink printers print with 4 primary colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). They use mixtures of these to get other colors. RGB color includes all the colors we can possibly see; they are made with mixing light waves. Because of the limited colors/brighnesses that can be made with the CMYK ink in a printer, some colors you can see, in the real world and in your monitor, can't be printed with that ink. Once again, you can tell a good photo program (like photoshop) to use only CMYK colors (that can be printed on paper) so you can see what the picture will eventually look like. Generally, printed (CMYK) images are not as bright as images on a monitor. That's the medium-long explanation. You might not have wanted to know all this, but it is interesting.

[hpiguy]

Nairb:

Thanks for the explanation.

I love the technical stuff because as an adult I feel insulted when I get the "simple" answer. I wanna know why.

{Hint RCCA: We guys like the deep technical stuff, and we need more articles like that.**

I learned something new today, and hopefully will tomorrow.

Thanks again.

[hpiguy]

BTW my camera is a Polariod PDC640. It has the LCD viewfinder and 8MB storage disk with video capture capability (I think 80 seconds video on low res), and has four resoution settings. On highest resolution it can hold 45 pics, then 90, then 132, then 330 as the resolution goes down. And it uses Photomax software.

The 640 has something to do with the resolution but I'll have to see.

I think it's 320 X 640 or something. Does that sound right?

[rvrrun]

Your camera probably takes a 320x240 or 640x 480 or something like that. Due to the shape of the CCD it has to be a 3:4 ratio.

Like NairB said, if you are taking a 320x240 image at a resolution of 300 (this is a common resolution for 4-color process used in printing) then you are ok.

I'll try to dind out the specs for that camera.

MS

[hpiguy]

640 x 480 I think is the correct one.

I just got it for Xmas and have figured out how to use MOST features but the vidoe one is really hard to get right. It's always blurry.

[Nairb]

Cool! Glad I could help.

I suggest you definitely take the picture at the resolution that will make the camera hold the least amount of pictures (30). 640 x 480 is a pretty weak resolution. Just think of it in terms of pixels, at 300 dpi the picture will be just over 2 inches wide. That may be barely enough, but I reccomend you go for bust and take the picture with the biggest file size, and the corresponding best resolution.

[rvrrun]

Nairb,

640 x 480 is a pretty weak resolution. Just think of it in terms of pixels, at 300 dpi the picture will be just over 2 inches wide.

I assume you are saying that the camera will only take 72 dpi images at a specific size (i.e. 640x480, 1024x768, 1280x1024 etc.), but
an image 640x480 @300dpi has a higher resolution than a 320x240 @300dpi. The 640x480 isn't the resolution, its just the image size.

just trying to clarify

MS

[This message has been edited by rvrrun (edited 01-15-2001).]