Viewing at 100%

In my last post, I mentioned a term called "viewing at 100%."
As you likely guessed, it simply means looking at the photo really big.

100% is the actual physical size of the photograph and, with the megapixels cameras today are offering, actual size can be huge.

When you view a photo at 100%, you can figure out if your photo is sharp, if it has any artifacts or chromatic aberration. And don't worry, if you don't know what all those terms mean, I'll get to it.

To put it simply, viewing at 100% is the modern digital equivalent of the old light table and loupe.

Let's take a look at an example that we used in the last post.

As you can see, even though the first image looks pretty good, if you view it at 100%, the edges are rather soft. Because of this, I would consider this photo a reject.

So, make sure to view your photos at full size before deciding wether or not to use it.

Apple Aperture (what I use), for example, will zoom to 100% just by pushing the "Z" key. Other professional software also makes it easy to view at 100%. If your software doesn't, that's okay. Just make sure to zoom in and inspect your photo.

-Nic