What does 100% crop mean?

You're tut was better than mine!

The way I see it is, 100% crop is a portion of your image that is the actual pixels you will see if printed, so if I zoom in to 100% and it is not sharp and not recoverble then I dont print, its the quality of the shot that your looking at.

Bruce

But printers don't print in actual pixels. They print in dpi. The 100% crop is in ppi. There is interpolation occurring before it is printed. Throw the idea of printing out the window for a second. 100% crop are helpful in analyzing images on screen. Period. Now, back to printing. If it takes a 100% crop to reveal issues that will manifest in printing, then you should get a new printer, or check your eyes. I know that sounds harsh, but I can't link general print quality with the 100% crop - even as useful a tool it is. It certainly can't hurt you're pictures to base printing criteria on it, but it may be too limiting to add negligible value to the workflow. Personally, I view sharpened images at about 50%, and decide whethre to give them the boot. When Testifying to the quality of a lens, or trying to identify the cause of a problem, I use the 100% crop.

[QUOTE=jfrancho]But printers don't print in actual pixels. quote]

I didnt say they did, what I ment was what you see in a 100% crop is what you see if you were holding the print in your hand. If I zoomed into 150% it would look pixalated and you wouldnt want to print that.

This is a picture I took for a client, now when I zoom in 100% if it looks like this crop then I know I will get a very nice print at 48 inches.

The way I work I know what will be the final print quality, I just did a product shoot and the client wanted a 6 ft by 2 ft print for her stand and I can tell you it came out very nice and from that shoot I got a couple more clients.

Bruce

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I was waiting for the "but I make six foot prints" reply! I still say that the sharp capture is only half the game here. The other half is the RIP that the printer is using, since a six foot print probably outresolves the camera.

Its just the way I found it works, as for the get your "eyes" seen to, I only have one so thats probably why I use the 100% method.

Bruce

The only reason this gets confusing is because the discussion goes way beyond the real issues. Here I go out on a limb again!

A digital image is nothing but an array of data representing a virtual image with a specific number of pixels in each of 2 dimensions. Imagine it as a field of dots floating in space but having no physical dimensions - just 5 million points in a grid of 2500 x 2000 pixels, each of which has a known color value.

A 100% crop of that is some selection from that virtual image - it may be some small portion of the image or it may be the whole thing, but it is typically some small portion of the whole.

If you now render that smaller, selected portion of that virtual image - that is display it on a screen or print it, you are giving it dimensions. It matters not what those dimensions are. What matters is that for the area of the image that you have selected and are rendering, the pixels are all there - 100% of the pixels from that selected area are there. That is a 100% crop.

The way one can predict how large that rendered image will be on a screen is to know the number of pixels per inch for which the screen is configured. Let's say that the screen is configured for 80 pixels per inch (most screens are configured for 70 to 100 pixels per inch), and let's say that our 100% crop is 240 pixels by 320 pixels.

The rendered image, when shown at magnification of 100%, will be 3" by 4". If it is shown at 200% magnification it will be 6" x 8", but it is still a 100% crop, because we are still using the 240 by 320 pixels (100%) of the crop. It only confuses the issue to show it at anything other than 100% magnification - especially when on this forum, because all images posted are being shown at 100% magnification.

sony23 wrote:
Its just the way I found it works, as for the get your "eyes" seen to, I only have one so thats probably why I use the 100% method.

Bruce

If it works...
Seriously, it would only make it better your way. I'm just not sure 'how much better.' I was taught to ensure absolute quality in every step of the workflow, and maybe this is an area I can improve. I often preach of the benefits of raw, 16-bit editing, working in Lab mode, non destructive sharpening, BIG color spaces, etc., but maybe I should do some pixel peeping where it counts. Although, if you've seen any of my live music photography, I prefer to view it much smaller than captured . I can sympathize with the eyesight (or lack) issue - I have diabetes and lost my vision completely for a few weeks in the fall. Thankfully, it stabilized at my normal nearsighted state.

jfrancho wrote:
If it works...
Seriously, it would only make it better your way. I'm just not sure 'how much better.' I was taught to ensure absolute quality in every step of the workflow, and maybe this is an area I can improve. I often preach of the benefits of raw, 16-bit editing, working in Lab mode, non destructive sharpening, BIG color spaces, etc., but maybe I should do some pixel peeping where it counts. Although, if you've seen any of my live music photography, I prefer to view it much smaller than captured . I can sympathize with the eyesight (or lack) issue - I have diabetes and lost my vision completely for a few weeks in the fall. Thankfully, it stabilized at my normal nearsighted state.

Sorry to hear about your diabetes, I have 2 brothers that have it and I see them every other month and they look different every time I see them.

Bruce