When trying to load images on your Pandigital photo frame, sometimes it will tell you that your image is unsupported, even though it loads fine and appears to be the same as the rest of your images that work perfectly.

The “not supported format” issue is usually caused by the way the image was originally saved onto your computer. We have found that if you save your images as “progressive” it will cause your images to not be supported by the pandigital photo frame. Depending on the program you use, you’ll need to make sure that your images are saved as “baseline” or “optimized” and not saved as “progressive”.

There are some other programs that also have this feature, so you’ll need to be sure that you select the right options when it comes time to save your images. This error happens a lot when performing photo scanning or slide scanning, or doing batch processing of lots of images.

If your images are coming up as an unsupported format, you can use a nifty program called IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) to determine what they were saved as.

If your unsupported images are showing up as “progressive” when viewed through IfanView, here are the steps you’ll need to do to fix it.

1. If you own Photoshop, there is an easy fix for this detailed below.

To fix your images using Photoshop, you’ll need to save them as optimized images, making sure to uncheck the box for progressive. Check the screenshot below.

2. If you don’t own Photoshop, there is an alternative you can use called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). There is a free download for GIMP at http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

To fix your images with Gimp, you’ll also need to save them as optimized images, making sure to uncheck the box for progressive. Check the screenshot below.

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Next time you scan your slides, negatives, and photos, watch for something called JPEG “compression” level. Don’t worry, all this will make sense soon.

For now, just know that your scanner’s default JPEG settings are probably not set right. This means your scans will lose some pixel quality. I will show you where to adjust the JPEG settings so you don’t lose any quality when saving your scans.

But first, you need to know two things about JPEG image files. Once you know this stuff, then you’ll be able to control the quality of your JPEG files.

1. JPEG Files Are Compressed

Professional photographers and graphic designers like to use TIFF image files. TIFFs are huge. Sometimes they’re 500 MB in file size. TIFFs are great because they have a lot of digital data. And the more data they have, the more a person can manipulate and edit that digital image.

But, for you and I, TIFFs are over-kill. Most of this digital data is redundant, and doesn’t add to the overall quality of your image.

Somebody figured out a way to remove all this useless data and maintain quality, using a compression method. Your TIFF file is sized down from 500 MB to 5 MB — but without losing any picture quality.

So what you end up with is a high-quality digital image, but at a file size that won’t clog up your computer space or take forever to upload.

2. You Can Control JPEG Compression

When the image scanning is completed and when you save your slides, negative, and photos as JPEGs, your scanner will give you the option to adjust how much your file is compressed.

Except the problem is, maybe like my scanner, your scanner’s default compression is set too high. The higher compressed your JPEG, the less detail you’ll see. It doesn’t matter if you scanned your slide at 4000 DPI. If you save that slide scan at a highly compressed JPEG, it will take away some detail.

Where Can You Change Your JPEG Compression Level When Scanning

Now that you know that you have the option to change the JPEG’s compression, you’ll need to read your scanner’s manual to find this option. With my scanner, the option to change JPEG compression comes up at the last step — when I’m about to save my scan. There’s an “JPEG Option” box I click to adjust the level. Once I have this set, I don’t have to touch it anymore.

My scanner’s default compression level is 6 out of 10. That’s too high. It gives me a small file size. But who cares. I want quality pixels. So I changed my compression to 1 out of 10. This will ensure that all my scans will be the highest JPEG quality possible.

Click here to read more

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Despite fragile appearances, film, such as negatives and home movies, can be stored for quite a while under the right conditions. The most important thing to keep in mind when storing important film or negatives is that they are adversely affected by sunlight, heat, moisture, dust and fingerprints. You often may not notice any damage at first, but a long-term exposure to these elements can be severely damaging to your films. Storing them in a dark, dry, cool location is your best bet for the longest life out of your film.

Organization is a very helpful thing to do prior to storing your film or negatives. Instead of fumbling around looking for a particular image, you’ll be able to pinpoint it in seconds. There are actually a few ways to go about this, such as grouping, or separating them out but most people organize them chronologically by using negative sleeves as pictured below.

If you have a collection of negatives you’re looking to store, you’ll also want to ensure that they are protected from dust, dirt, and potential fingerprints. It’s best to use the plastic sleeves that are given when they are first processed, however, if you don’t have these sleeves, you can use airtight ziplock bags instead. For old home movie film such as 8mm, 16mm, or super 8, it’s best to store them on plastic film reels and in plastic canisters (metal reels and canisters can leave rust and other deposits on your film) away from heat, sunlight, or humidity.

If you have personally valuable or historically important film or negatives, it’s best to scan, convert or duplicate them, in case something were to happen as there is no way to replace the original once lost!

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It’s important to understand the concepts of DPI and PPI when preparing your photo scanning project. You’ll want to choose the option that is best for the project you’ll be working on. PPI, or pixels per inch, refers to how many pixels your digital image contains. This will affect the print size of your photo, and the output quality. For archival purposes, you’ll want the PPI to be as large as possible in order for the image to contain as much of the original information as possible. If the pixels per inch is too low, the resulting image will display large visible pixels that look jagged and unpleasant. Notice from the images below for a quick visual on how PPI can affect the output quality of the image.

There is a no concrete number for what PPI your images should be for print, however, with print you can get away with a much lower PPI because you look at large prints from a further distance than a small print, so you can get away with a lower PPI and still have the image look fine.

DPI generally refers to the printer. Every pixel is made up of different colors which the printer must must mix and match accordingly. Each pixel is made up of tiny dots, and the higher the DPI, the more dots there are to fill in these pixels which result in much better color blending and tone of the image. With a higher DPI, you also end up using more ink and spending more time printing each image. A low DPI would result in fewer ink dots per pixel which makes the resulting print look worse than that of a higher DPI.

For film scanning such as 35mm slide scanning and APS negative scanning, since the original film is so small you’ll want to scan them at the highest PPI possible in order to preserve the original data. Don’t forget that you can always resize your images at a later time, and you will definitely want to resize your high quality scans for web use.

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Technorati Tags: DPI, dpi vs ppi, image pixels, PPI, resolution

The internet is full of all kinds of different websites this day and age. Image hosting sites have really boomed in popularity over the years. Do the the sensitive nature of images, these sites offer many advantages ranging from security to ease of use. Most are aware of image hosting of some form, the most common being the common Facebook uploaded images and Facebook albums. Facebook hosts so many images that they are spending millions of dollars per month just to expand to new servers in order to meet everyones image hosting demands!

With image hosting, most people would simply want to upload their photos to a photo album and be done with it. For simple online storage such as this, Facebook is an excellent option. Facebook image uploading provided an extremely quick and easy method of uploading, and not to mention, your photos will be instantly part of the largest social networking site on the planet in the process. Due to the ease of use, popularity, and functionality of Facebook, it has quickly risen to the zenith of the internet world.

In addition to Facebook, there are several other hosting options to choose from, with each having it’s own advantages. These sites are particularly advantageous if you want an image hosting option that’s not anchored to your personal Facebook account. Photobucket provides a great platform for image hosting. After signing up for an account, uploading is only a few clicks away. You can also set up custom links and tags for all your images for easy sharing with friends or family. Albums can be customized to match the intent of the user, as well. Each album can be given a different background to match their image’s theme, whether it be Christmas, or Summer themed. The one drawback of Photobucket is that they do have bandwidth limitations on the free accounts. To get around this, you’d need to upgrade a Pro account, but the cost is negligible at less than $2 per month.

Picassa, owned by Google, is another popular choice for avid photographers. Picassa is great because you can actually download the Picassa program from Google, import your images into the program, and the program will actually automatically sync the images on your computer to your online Picassa account. This feature makes it incredible easy to store your photos, as it requires next to no effort. Aside from this, Picassa also has a very clean user interface, which makes it a breeze to find what you need from the program without pulling your hair out in the process. You can download the Picassa application for Mac or PC from this link HERE.

Another site which has gained a strong following is Flickr. This is sort of like a photographers social network. People will upload photos, which can then friends can add testimonials to the images. Flickr also has a forum with an active community deeply rooted in photography. The drawback of Flickr may be only that it lacks some of the more advanced features and sharing options of the larger networks.

When planning your photo scanning job, you should have an online storage option in your mind, as it’s an extremely easy way to preserve your images. We recommend to all our customers whether they are interested in photo scanning in San Diego or slide scanning in Irvine that they always consider using online storage in addition to a hard copy.

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Technorati Tags: host your images, image hosting, top image sites

We’re celebrating our relocation to Irvine!

We are pleased to announce that your local, professional and specialized Family Media Transfer Technicians are now located at 18226 McDurmott W., Suite D, Irvine, CA 92614. The Costa Mesa store has been moved and all orders can be picked up and dropped off at our Irvine office as of Monday, June 28th. We will continue our mission to provide the highest quality video transfer service in Irvine and film to DVD in Irvine.

We moved everything out over the weekend and took it on over to Irvine at our brand new office location. We hope our new location will make it easier than ever to digitize your family’s memories! Stop by and ask how we can restore your old film and create a perfect gift with our great media transfer services such as 8mm to DVD transfer in Irvine.

Come on down and check out our new office location, and don’t forget to Like us on Facebook to receive additional news, offers, and deals!

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Technorati Tags: irvine, office move, vhs to dvd irvine

Congratulations! You found our blog! This is a place where we will post answers to common (and not so common) questions, interesting information about different products and technologies, and lots of other audio/video stuff. As “The Leader in Family Media Transfer,” we can help you take the guesswork out of getting your media transferred, whether you have us do it to save time and hassle, or decide to do it on your own in order to learn the ins and outs of the process.

Of course, we’ll  include suggestions on editing and creating a beautiful slideshow, neat cassette to CD tricks,  camcorder tapes and VHS to DVD tips, and  film to DVD recommendations. We’ll try to talk about our equipment for slide scanning, how the same equipment can be used to scan negatives, what attachments you’ll need, and what to expect when you start using them. We’ll also go into photo scanning, why “flatbedding” is better than fast/batch scanners, and recommendations for balancing quality and your budget.

Some entries will be based on questions we answer on our forum, or other forums. When we are cruising the internet and come across questions about film transfer, we can’t help but jump into the conversation!  We’ll also answer questions relating to computer problems (if they’re related to media transfer) as well, and some software and hardware recommendations. So keep watching!

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