What is a Digital Photo?

A digital photo is a photograph taken using any digital device that renders the captured image electronically. According to Wikipedia, “most photographs are created using a camera”, although I am not aware of any other device or devices that can be used for this purpose. Digital camera, cellphone camera and webcam are the most popular gagdets for taking a digital photo. You can also use a scanner to scan actual photographs and convert them into files that can be read by the computer, thus making them “digital”.

Digital photos are stored as image files such as JPEG, TIFF, RAW and BMP.

• JPEG or Joint Photographic Experts Group. The extension name is JPG but other OS might use JPEG. It supports 8 bits per color (red, green, blue) for a 24-bit total, producing relatively small but good quality files. Most digital cameras save images in the JPEG format, but it is not recommended with files that will undergo multiple edits as the quality degrades when repeatedly edited and saved.

• TIFF or Tagged Image File Format. TIFF (or TIF) is a high-color-quality format that normally saves 8 bits or 16 bits per color (red, green, blue) for 24-bit and 48-bit totals, making the file size larger. The TIFF image format, unlike JPEG, does not decrease in quality when the image is manipulated repeatedly, but not all digital cameras saves files in this format and TIFF is not nearly as popular as the JPEG format.

• RAW is not a single file format but rather refers to a family of raw image formats. RAW is not a standard file extension, but loosely pertains to “raw image data”.  You can think of it as the “negative” of digital photos because they contain all information about image but cannot be viewed, or stored, as an image yet. Not all digital camera and certainly no cellphone or web camera save images in their RAW format. But when available, it is best to edit images in these formats as they do not degrade in quality. However, each camera manufacturer has its own raw format and more often, provides it’s own image editor to manipulate the file. Not all graphic programs can recognize and handle all available raw formats.

• BMP or Bitmap images are used mostly in Microsoft Windows. Typically, BMP files are uncompressed, hence they are large; the advantage is their simplicity, wide acceptance, and use in Windows programs.

Digital photos easily won the favor of a lot of people over the lab-processed and non-digital prints simply because you can do almost anything with them. Kodak moments are not only captured in photographs but are recreated, enhanced and reused in various media, shown in numerous instances around the globe. Photo albums are no longer kept in shelves or drawers. Photo frames do not gather dust anymore.

You can choose to have your digital photos printed and stored like good old photographs in a photo album or displayed on a digital photo frame. Or you can save them in your computer’s hard drive, or a memory stick, or any digital storage you have. You can bring them with you always, on your cellphones, digital key chains, or multimedia players. You can upload them on the internet, post them at Flickr or Picasa, place them in your online photo albums, Phlog them, or share them with your friends through email.

If there’s something you want to be added or removed from your digital photos, Photoshop has tools that can alter history. You can create a photograph of something that do not exist out of something that exist quite boringly. If you hate the color of your shirt or the big, red, swollen pimple on your nose the day you were photographed, the magic is all in your hands and the mouse underneath or the Wacom Pen in it. If you want to make a postcard, a poster, an impression, a statement, a magazine front-cover with you on it, you are only be limited by the graphic software that you are using.

If you think about it, digital photos are no longer just photographs or image file formats. They are so much more.