What’s the Difference Between a High and Low Resolution Photo?

Let’s say you just played an awesome match of rugby and you want to email this photo (and a few others) to all your teammates.  

Well, this photo was close to 2MB. Many email servers would reject an email with 8MB of attachments. So you’d need to create a low resolution version of it.

Let’s examine the Pros and Cons of High and Low Resolution Photos using this action-packed photo of rugby players.

Low Resolution Photos (depending on your camera, around 150kb):

• You can fit many more photos on a flash card.  If you have a 1Gb card and set your camera to take low-resolution photos, you can fit around 6,666 photos! More than enough for several years.
• You can email them easily
• You can upload them to a web gallery quickly
• You can make movies with them without needing a lot of processing power on your computer
• You can’t print out nice looking photos (they will look pixelated)
• You can’t zoom in to the photos very much in your movies, they will look pixelated

You want to create a movie of the game using your photos.  As a roast, you create a tight close-up of Ryan’s face.  If you use the low-resolution photo, here’s what you get:

Tight close-up of low-resolution photo

High Resolution Photos (depending on your camera, upwards of 1MB):

• You can print out really great photos, even enlargements
• You can zoom way into the photos when you create a movie (picture the effects used on the History Channel)
• You can’t fit as many on a photo card
• You can only email a few at a time

You still want to create that movie, but this time you use a high-resolution photo. Here’s what you get:

Tight close-up of high-resolution photo

Notice a difference?  No chunky squares on his shoulders or hair. But it will take a lot more processor power to create the movie.

There is also the other extreme of photos, the RAW image. These files can be 20MB and must be processed. They take up a lot of room on the photo card, but offer the greatest flexibility in what your final image will look like.

A few things to think about:

• What do I want to do with the photos?  Print, email, or both?
• How big is my flash card?
• Do I also want to fit a lot of video on the flash card?
• Will I create a movie with the photos?

As with anything in life, there are gray areas. You can always create a low resolution version of your high resolution photo, but you can not increase the resolution of a photo.

By playing with your camera’s settings, you can also find a resolution in the middle that both prints out well and emails fairly easily.