Image format

[djblackburn]

How can I convert ULEAD STUDIO 10 saved still images to a format suitable for e-mailing and of sufficient quality for publication?
Dan

[skier-hughes]

Do you mean that you want a frame grab from VS, small enough to email and large enough to be professionally printed?

If so, you are hoping.

A frame grab can be maximum 720x576(480) in SD.
To make it smaller to email you lose quality.
To be good enough to print, you will need to do some work on the shot using a high quality photo editing programme, resizing physically smaller whilst retaining the numbe of pixels.

It is done, but it's not easy, and you need a publisher that understands you can't supply a minimum 300dpi shot from video.

[DVDDoug]

Besides the fact that video is not "photo quality" or "film quality", there is another interesting issue... The pixels in a digital still-image are square. Video pixels are rectangular. Both 4x3 and 16x9 video use 720x480 (NTSC) or 720x576. You can see that the pixel ratios don't match the dimensional ratios.

There is some quality/detail lost when pixels are added/subtracted to make the still proportions correct. (The software will adjust the pixel count automatically when the still is generated.)

If you are "grabbing" a moving image, the interlacing will add distortion.

Also, it seems to me that human perception is more "tolerant" of video than stills. An identical still image just doesn't "look" as sharp.

There is one thing in your favor. The printed still image will be smaller than the typical video monitor. Of course, a smaller picture will appear sharper. You can actually get 300 DPI if you make the image small enough!

[heinz-oz]

How can I convert ULEAD STUDIO 10 saved still images to a format suitable for e-mailing and of sufficient quality for publication?
Dan

These are mutually exclusive requirements. You cannot have an image small enough to email and still good enough for publication.

A still captured from a video is small enough to be emailed but too small to be printed. Also, the picture quality will never be what you expect from a digital photo. If it were, there would be hardly a still camera being sold. For the same reasons, nobody serious about it uses a still camera to shoot video either. In both cases a compromise is being made.

Back to your still from a video. Not only is it very small in size, it is interlaced also. On top of that, because of the nature of video and the resultant long exposure per frame, there is a lot of motion blurr in such an image as well.

If you want to insist on doing this, you would need an image editing program like PhotoImpact, PSP or Adobe PS and the neccessary expertise.

[sjj1805]

OK now you've heard the downside to your problem here is the upside.
Best quality is obtained by capturing to BMP and not JPG and so go to
File : Preferences
On the capture TAB select the BMP format and also make sure that you have a tick in the box that states Image Capture De-Interlace.

Now when you capture your freeze frame you would have to use that for the publication - perhaps tidy it up a bit first with PhotoImpact or another Image Editor.

To email, use your Image Editor (PhotoImpact etc) to convert the image into a JPG and select a quality setting to your likening.
Smaller file size = smaller quality = faster transfer over the internet.
larger file size = better quality = slower transfer over the internet.