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Turn Your Camera on Its' Side
Most cameras are designed to take pictures in "landscape" mode, so you can get
that great wide shot of the beach, the mountains, or the whole football field.
However, the task at hand is a photo of a person for an ID and generally
requires taking the image in "portrait" mode. That means turning the camera
sideways, thereby changing the aspect ratio from 4 to 3 landscape to 3 to
4 or portrait. Note: when using portrait mode be sure to always turn the camera
sideways the same way or you will have some images that are upside down as
compared to others..
Aspect Ratio
All employee images must have the same aspect ratio. This means that if photos are taken
in landscape mode then all images must be submitted in landscape mode. If taken in
portrait mode, then all images must be in portrait mode. Aspect ratios = width divided by
height, e.g. 480 divided by 640 equals 0.75 to 1 or 3 to 4
Cropping images
Many times images are not centered or the employees’ image does not fill the frame
and cropping the image is desired. When cropping the images, all images must be kept the
same aspect ratio and should be the same size +/- a few pixels. The
same aspect ratio is
more important than the same size. We can crop and resize your images for an additional
charge.
Image Resolution
Resolution here refers to the number of dots, or pixels, the image is high and wide.
Aspect ratio is the ratio of height vs. width. An image that is 480 x 640 (portrait) has
an aspect ratio of 3 to 4. or 0.75 to 1. Digital cameras take pictures at several resolutions, from low
240 x 320 or 480 x 640 to medium 600 x 800 or 786 x 1024 to high resolutions of 864 x
1152, 1200 x 1600, 1524 x 2032 or higher. These are all the same 3 to 4 aspect ratio in
portrait mode. We prefer if you use the lowest resolution setting of your
camera.
Print resolution
Our card printer prints at 300 dots (pixels) per inch. If printed at 100%, a 480 x 640
image would print on the card as 1.60” by 2.13” which is on the large side,
given that the badge is only 2.125” x 3.375”. However, it is acceptable, since
it can easily be reduced to a smaller size to fit the card such as 1.00” x
1.33”. Images larger than 480 x 640 will not enhance the print quality of your
badges, will cause difficulty in emailing images, take up more disk storage space, and
take more time to print your cards.
Screen resolution
Many Microsoft programs, including Word, Excel, Paint etc. display images as 96 dots per
inch (dpi) when set to 100%. So an image that is 480 x 640 set to 100% would measure on
the display rulers in MS-Word at 5” wide by 6.66” tall. That would take up
roughly half the standard 8.5 x 11 page. This is different than you monitor resolution,
which is another subject altogether.
File size
An image that is 480 x 640 uncompressed is about 920 KB. An image that is 1524 x 2032
uncompressed is about 9200 KB (3.1 mega-pixel camera image). Many programs can save these
images as compressed JPG files without forsaking image quality. An image of 480 x 640 can
be saved as a compressed JPG file with a size of 25 to 35 KB or less. A 3.1 mega pixel
image can be compressed to 125 to 250 KB, however it still would contain more than ten
times the data needed for badge printing. This extra information serves only to clog our
email, hard drives, and slow our printer.
Image Format and File Name
Images must be JPG format, compressed, preferably all 480 x 640 resolution, but at minimum
the same aspect ratio (See Image resolution below). There are variants of JPG files that
we cannot open. Be sure you can open your JPG files with the standard Windows Paint
program before sending them to us.. Images should be named with the employee’s name
such as: John Doe.JPG. Multiple images files should be zipped using a zip program such as
WinZip or WinRAR and emailed to sales@expresstimesystems.com.
Total email size should not exceed 2 MB.
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