Linda44 writes: I need to learn which format is best for saving my photos: JPEG, TIFF, PSD, PDD, BMP, PICT, PNG. I really don't understand which format is best for what. Is there a list that would tell when to use which one, and explain why? Also, when I am saving [JPEG], a box comes up asking if I want to save it in Baseline, Baseline Optimized, or Progressive. I have NO idea which of these is best!

• If the images are for the Web or online, use JPEG, PNG, or GIF.
• If the images are for print, use TIFF.
• If you want to keep a version that remains editable, choose your software's native file format. (PSD for Photoshop, PSP for Paint Shop Pro, CPT for Corel Photo-Paint, etc.)

Here are brief descriptions of common graphics file formats, with links to follow for more information:

JPEG - JPEG is best for photos when you need to keep the file size small and don't mind giving up some quality for a significant reduction in size. JPEG is not suitable for images with text, large blocks of color, or simple shapes, because crisp lines will blur and colors can shift. Only JPEG offers the options of Baseline, Baseline Optimized, or Progressive.

• Baseline (Standard) - This JPEG format is recognized by all Web browsers.
• Baseline Optimized - This JPEG format option provides optimized color and slightly better compression. It is supported by all modern browsers, but was not supported in the very earliest of Web browsers. It's your best choice for JPEG files today.
• Progressive - Creates a JPEG file that displays gradually as it downloads, starting out blocky, and gradually getting clearer as it downloads. It doesn't make the image download any faster, but it can give the illusion of speed since the blocky image is loaded right away on a slow connection. With the majority of internet users on high speed connections today, Progressive JPEG is rarely used.

TIFF - TIFF is good for any type of bitmap (pixel-based) images. TIFF produces large files, but there is no loss in quality. TIFF also preserves layers, alpha transparency, and other special features when saved from Photoshop. The type of extra information stored with TIFF files varies in different Photoshop versions, so consult Photoshop's help for more information.

PSD, PDD - PSD and PDD are Photoshop's native format. Use PSD when you need to preserve layers, transparency, adjustment layers, masks, clipping paths, layer styles, blending modes, vector text and shapes, etc. The PDD extension was used in Adobe PhotoDeluxe (now discontinued), but it is identical to PSD format and the two can be used interchangeably.

BMP - Use BMP for any type of bitmap (pixel-based) images. BMPs are huge files, but there is no loss in quality. BMP has no real benefits over TIFF, except you can use it for Windows wallpaper.

PICT - PICT is an old, Mac-only bitmap format, similar to BMP for Windows. PICT is not often used today.

PNG - Use PNG when you need smaller file sizes with no loss in quality. PNG files are usually smaller than TIFFs, in my experience. PNG also supports alpha transparency (soft edges) and was developed to be a Web graphics replacement for GIF.

GIF - Use GIF for simple Web graphics having limited colors. GIF files are always reduced to 256 unique colors or less and they make very small, fast-loading graphics for the Web. GIF is great for Web buttons, charts or diagrams, cartoon-like drawing, banners, and text headings. GIF is also used for small, compact Web animations. GIF should rarely be used for photos.

With the rise in popularity and affordability of digital cameras, the variety and quality of digital-photography software has likewise skyrocketed in recent years. Many new cell phones come with digital cameras built in, and photo-sharing sites such as Flickr, Webshots, and Snapfish have made posting your pictures online a breeze.

Many of the programs within Digital Photo Tools will perform an array of valuable photo functions, such as importing, organizing, displaying, and editing your photos. Some of the popular and highly rated programs in the category are ACDSee 8 Photo Manager, FlipAlbum Standard, and free programs Kodak EasyShare and StudioLine Photo Basic. Other, focused programs offer more functionality and features for specific tasks. Image-editing tools are among the most popular programs on Download.com, including fabulous freeware such as IrfanView, FastStone Image Viewer, XnView, and the powerful open-source tool The GIMP. Commercial programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro also have a long history of excellence.

Media-management software helps keep your photo collection in control. Google's Picasa program dominates the category with more than a million downloads, but nearly 200 other products are competing to knock it from its throne. For making sure your camera is using the latest internal software, be sure to search the Digital Camera Firmware category for your make and model. The Digital Photo Center ties the whole ball of yarn together, with digital camera reviews from CNET Reviews, tips for perfecting your pictures, and tools for creating your own online photo albums.

Landscape photography is widely popular. I am sure if you look around your home you will see at least two landscape prints that spoke to you. Photography is an art that has a message. As a photographer you have to find the message you want to portray. If you specialize in landscape photography you might think your task is easy to complete. As with any photography you have to pay attention to the details, the lighting, shadows, subject, and the equipment.

Black and white landscape photography is the hardest section to attain true artistry because you are not relying on the colors as much as the lights and shadows the image will create. Composition is very important. Composition in photography means to look for sharp edges, tones and textures. The basis of black and white photography is getting the camera to see what your eye sees in color; to bring the highlights and shadows forward with the angle of the picture. Typical subjects for black and white photography are buildings and water. Water gives the surrounding trees and rocks a contrast while drawing the eye. Landscape can encompass buildings or bridges among other subjects. Buildings lend to the angles and contrast you seek when trying for definition and emotion.

When landscape photography is your subject in color you will need to have contrast between the colors. If the sky is blue and you have blue water below chances are the picture is not going to have the contrast you are hoping for. Like black and white photography you need to have definition or composition in the shot. You will need to take a few minutes to set up the shot and perhaps take several frames before being satisfied. Color photography takes less skill than black and white photography so if you have master the last you will succeed at the first.

Lighting for landscape photography is natural rather artificial. This is important when setting up your shot. You will need to have filters for the sunlight if it is a bright day, perhaps a tripod to set up the shot and a professional grade camera to create professional prints. Studying your subject from all angles is also important. You want to make sure you are picking the best angle for the shot. Remember the message is brought forth by the skill of the photographer.

You abilities should be honed and practiced. Digital photography makes landscape photography easier because you can assess the photo before you leave a site. Again the LCD screen isn’t going to show you every aspect of the print so you will want to take a few shots of the same site to ensure a perfect picture.

Even being an amateur photographer you can gain professional looking landscape photography. The best way to gain great photographs is to practice with a subject. Going back to the same site during different seasons can help you hone your skills and net you an even better print the next time around. All photographers’ start at the same level, some may have innate skills and an eye for the photo, but practice will lead to the best print. Landscape photography may not require the skills of wildlife photography with panning the subject or portraits where you have to enliven your subject; however, it does require skills and practice.

Stock photography, groups of photographs that people take, grouped and licensed for selling purposes. Instead of taking new pictures every time they need pictures, many people use the stock photography method. People that work for magazines, as graphic artists, and advertising agencies sometimes use public pictures instead of hiring photographers for individual projects.

Alternate names for stock photography is picture libraries, photo archives or image banks. Typically, in order to use these pictures, although publicly available, there is a small fee or a purchasing of usage rights that comes with a fee in order to use the pictures. Sometimes a membership purchase allows you to have access to a particular group of stock photography.

Saving time and money, stock photography is a great way to enhance newsletters, blogs, advertisements, company brochures and more. It is obviously less expensive than putting a full time photographer on staff and takes less time if you need images of something specific. Many times, it is as easy as using a search engine or checking an email.

Sometimes full rights and usage is available for purchase. Other times, full rights are limited. In those cases, photographers might be requiring that they receive a certain percentage of sales and or royalties of usage. Agencies usually hold the images on files and negotiate fees. With the technology and easy access that the internet provides, negotiations are quicker and easier.

The cost of using stock photos depends on how long the pictures will be used, what location the images will be used, if the original photographer wants royalties and how many people the photo will be distributed to or seen by. Prices for stock photography can be anywhere from one dollar to two hundred dollars.

There are several different pricing arrangements. Royalty free stock photography allows the buyer to use photographs multiple times in multiple ways. When you buy royalty free pictures, there is only a one-time charge for unlimited usage. When the images you purchase have a royalty free section, the agency is able to resell the image to others. If an image is rights managed, there is a negotiated price for each time that it is used.

Sometimes a buyer of stock photography might desire to have exclusive rights to the images. In that case, no one else will be able to use the pictures once exclusive rights have been purchased. It may cost thousands of dollars to purchase exclusive rights because agencies who handle the sales have to make sure that they are making a profitable sale. If a photograph would make more money staying in circulation, they would lose out selling exclusive rights.

Stock photographers sometimes work with agencies producing images for them alone. Different subjects and categories might need multiple varieties of images. Sometimes contributors work for multiple agencies selling their photographs for a fee. They work out arrangements for royalties or they sell their shots for full rights. This has proved to be a big business for photographers around the world.

Stock photography started in the early 1920s. It especially grew as its own specialty by the 1980s. Galleries hold hundreds, thousands and even millions of pictures available for purchase. Stock houses sprung up in many different places. By 2000, online stock photography became microstock photography, which we call photo archives online. Companies like istock photo and bigstock photo offer you the opportunity to purchase so many pictures and when you use them up you can add more credits for another fee. Photos that are distributed online are typically less expensive than those that are sold hard copy.

Websites like www.shutterpoint.com and www.fotolibra.com allow stock photographers to upload and sell their images. It is a great way to market pictures and earn money with photography. You can also purchase images at those websites as well. With all the stock photography sites available, one may find pictures you never even heard of before.

Have you ever wondered where modern photography originated? While we are now moving into the digital age and away from film, the lighting techniques and other photography techniques began in the 1820’s. Niepce and Daguerre were the first inventors of modern photography. They used a chemical component from silver and chalk, which darkens when exposed to light. This type of technology used a glass negative to cement the picture.

From the early cameras seen in western films we have moved on to manual cameras with film. This film or negative captured the image on a roll to be developed in a dark room to prevent over exposure. The manual cameras used a theory of setting up shots. You had to understand aperture, shutter speed, white balance, and metering to obtain the best picture possible. This meant you spent a lot of time setting up the shot and had to be a professional to catch wildlife in their natural habits.

Aperture is measured by F-stops, or the amount of light the lens will let in. Focusing and depth of field are also important when setting the aperture on your camera. You have to know what numbers will allow more light to enter the lens and the converse to avoid over exposure and blurriness. Shutter speed is the amount of time a lens is open for the picture. You may have found in a darkened room without flash your camera takes a while to imprint the picture on the negative. This is because the light is dim and the shutter must correct for the lack of light. The lack of light induces a need to expose the film longer to obtain the picture where as more light will have the shutter moving at a faster speed.

From the manual cameras we moved into the automatic. The camera became lighter. The shutter speed and aperture was programmed into the camera by the settings. ISO became important. ISO is the film speed. Instead of taking minutes to set up a shot you just had to pick the correct setting and hold the button down to focus. Many cameras came as automatic with manual options for those who still liked to treat photography as an artistic vocation.

Digital cameras are the new era in photography. Now we can see the picture we take without the use of film and negatives. We can send the pictures to all of our friends and use our home printers to create prints. Photography has moved from the concentration of taking the perfect shot with a skill born to a few to everyone taking pictures.

This is not to say photography and photographers will not remain. There is still the need for quality in taking professional grade photographs. Light sensitivity is still important when dealing with a digital camera and unless you spend a lot, you will find quality of photographs is still missing. Photograph techniques lay within the lighting provided whether natural or artificial for the subject. You might wonder how to create a photograph in a dark room like a museum to share with your friends and family. Knowing the past photography techniques will help you in attaining that perfect photograph with your digital camera. Photography may have originated with few people, but we can see the advancements their inventions have led us to now.

If you are a sports fan, you know what it means when a team goes into a “rebuilding year”. It is just when the owners or coaches decide its time to train new members and correct bad habits in others. And invariably, what team leadership says when they go into such a time is that they are going “back to basics.”

Sometimes it’s good for us as photographers to go back to basics. And, of course, if you are just getting started in the world of photography and want to learn “the ropes”, the basics are a natural start. But you want the basics of what the professionals know about the craft of photography.

Anybody can take a picture. I attended a wedding reception where the wedding party left a disposable digital camera on each table at the reception for guests to snap photos. Before the evening was over, it was the children who were running around taking pictures of everything from the dirty dishes to their own underwear. These were not photographers and while those pictures will no doubt get a few chuckles, these are not the kind of professional pictures people want for their long-term memories.

Obviously, the cornerstone of the basics of photography is the camera. When you see a camera geek walking around with enough equipment on his neck to launch a space shuttle, you get the impression that cameras are phenomenally complex, more than mere mortals can grasp. But look at the professionals and you see them working with portable, relatively easy to operate cameras. That is because the basics of running a camera come down to aperture and shutter speed.

Now don’t get nervous about fancy terms. Aperture is just a term for how wide your camera lens is open to let in light. And shutter speed is just how long you let the light come in to affect the picture. For getting a shot of a fast moving event, you want a wide aperture to let in a lot of light but a short shutter speed so you capture the event quickly and close the window so the picture is caught before more light hurts the quality.

Photography is really all about light. You can and will get learn a lot about lenses and flash photography and other ways to turn the control over the lighting of a shot to you. So add to your core skills of photography a willingness to never stop learning. The better and more sophisticated you get in your ability to work with the equipment, the more you will learn and the more you will want to learn.

You can get a greater control over these basic controls of the camera such as aperture and shutter speed by learning how to switch from automatic settings to manual settings. The automatic settings of any camera are just there for the general public who are not interested in learning the basics. So they give you some basic settings like landscape, portrait and sports settings. By switching to manual, you can learn what settings work best in different situations.

And that takes us to the most important basic about becoming a great photographer and that is practice. Take some time with your equipment and play with it. Take it to situations and take photos with different aperture and shutter speed settings, in outdoor and indoor settings and different orientations to light. Don’t get upset when some shots don’t work. That’s part of the learning curve.

By learning by doing, you will build your confidence in your work and eventually become a great photographer. But don’t get cocky, there is always more to learn. And that is one of the fun things about photography, isn’t it?