Picture Taking Tips & Recommendations
Taking pictures with automatic digital cameras is easy. But, there are two important picture-taking areas that affect the quality you'll get on your prints: picture resolution and camera exposure.
Resolution - What You Need to Know
Resolution - What you need to know
Digital cameras make pictures by recording the light that hits photo sensors. The digital information is recorded as pixels...or points of information. These pixels can be thought of as microscopic dots that make up your picture. If there are enough pixels you will get a good, sharp picture. With too few pixels, the picture will have jagged edges in the subject matter.
The number of pixels you need for a good print depends on the size of the print. The larger the print size, the more pixels (dots) are necessary to fill in the space.
How you set your camera can determine the number of pixels you get and the subsequent quality of your prints. We recommend setting your camera at the highest resolution and "Best" quality level to get the highest quality on your prints and give yourself the option of ordering bigger prints. (The downside of setting your camera to the highest quality level is that you'll be shooting fewer pictures before filling up a memory card.)
Our iPrints program will automatically let you know whether the print size you're
ordering has enough resolution for an acceptably sharp print. You'll see a
"Happy Face" on
your monitor next to digital pictures with enough resolution
and a 
"Sad Face" with digital pictures that don't have enough resolution.
Selecting a smaller sized print will give you the quality you'll want.
Here are the minimum resolution file sizes we recommend for each print size:
| Size | Recommended Minimum Resolution |
Megapixels |
| 4x6 | 600x800 | 0.4 | 5x7 | 960x1280 | 1.2 | 8x10 | 1200x1600 | 1.9 |
You don't need to spend a lot of time worrying about these numbers, though. Smiley faces on the order form will indicate which print sizes are best for your picture
- Recommended for
the selected print size
- Not
recommended for the selected print size
Though your camera will automatically control exposure, the amount of light striking the image sensor, some digital cameras may slightly misjudge the correct exposure. While film has several stops of exposure latitude (the amount you can miss the correct exposure and still get a good print) there is practically no margin for error with digital cameras. Although our technicians individually color correct every picture, some camera exposure errors are beyond the correctable range. That's why having good exposures when you take your pictures can go a long way in getting you the best prints.
Many of the lower-priced digital cameras have no way for you to override the exposure your camera selects. However, some of the more expensive camera models will often have an exposure bias control that lets you adjust how your camera exposes the picture. Some will also have a graph, known as a histogram, which you can use to determine the optimum exposure range. We suggest you read your camera's instruction manual to see if any of these exposure-adjusting tools are in the camera's feature set.
Looking at pictures with people's flesh tones on your camera's LCD monitor is the quickest way to determine how accurately your camera is gauging exposure. Your camera is most likely overexposing if people's foreheads are very washed out. Conversely, you are getting underexposures if the faces are dark and the shadow areas are blacked out.
If your camera has exposure correction capability, give a minus exposure bias to correct for the camera overexposing or a plus exposure bias to correct for the camera underexposing. We'd suggest you make changes in 1/3 stop increments. After each change, take a test picture and note the change.
For cameras with histogram displays, take test pictures and look at the histogram. You'll be adjusting the exposure bias until the histogram is centered. See your camera's instruction manual for details.
Dale iPrints can be made from any digital camera image and most commonly-used digital image file formats. Our easy-to-use ordering system will allow you to browse through your computer to find the images you wish to order. You may also wish to order iPrints from JPEG files on Dale Picture CDs produced from scanned 35mm film.
You can upload the following digital photo file types: JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg), TIFF (.tif, .tiff), Windows Bitmap (.bmp), and PNG (.png). Your original digital image file will not be moved or changed; only a copy will be uploaded to our server.
Don't worry about technical details. Our iPrints program will guide you. Just upload your images and check the smiley faces to see what size print(s) would be best to order. Windows users with Internet Explorer (or any browser supporting ActiveX) may upload up to 100 different images per order. Otherwise, you will be limited to 10 pictures per upload.
For any technical questions, please call us at (800) 327-1776. We're here to help