Picture's from cell phone

[street]

I have another question for the savvy tech people. So I take a lot of pictures with my cell phone and then I sent them email to my home computer then save pictures on the laptop.

My question is when I want to use one as a background picture for my laptop they don't fit properly. I can stretch, fit, fill etc. but not a proportioned picture even after using one of those methods.

Is there any way for a better fit on the screen of my laptop? I send the pictures medium would it make a difference sending them a different size when I email them to my home computer??

 

[cathy63]

No, changing the photo compression from medium to something else won't help. The problem is that the aspect ratio on your phone's camera doesn't match your laptop's screen resolution.

Google for your phone's specs and find out what it's screen size is (look for something like 1920x1080 pixels), then see if your laptop display can be set to the same resolution.

 

[Sojourner]

So I take a lot of pictures with my cell phone and then I sent them email to my home computer then save pictures on the laptop.

This is slightly OT from what you asked, but I'd recommend installing Google Photos on your phone and your laptop. It automatically backs up all your photos and syncs them between your phone and your laptop, so you won't have to bother with emailing pictures from your phone. It's free and is a great way to ensure all your photos are backed up and accessible from anywhere.

 

[street]

Thanks cathy63 I will look in to that.

 

[Freedom56]

I have another question for the savvy tech people. So I take a lot of pictures with my cell phone and then I sent them email to my home computer then save pictures on the laptop.

My question is when I want to use one as a background picture for my laptop they don't fit properly. I can stretch, fit, fill etc. but not a proportioned picture even after using one of those methods.

Is there any way for a better fit on the screen of my laptop? I send the pictures medium would it make a difference sending them a different size when I email them to my home computer??

Crop your picture to the same aspect ratio as the display on your laptop (i.e. 16 x 9). A crop size of 1920x1080, 1280x720, or 1366x768 will work for widescreen laptops. If you don't have Photoshop to crop the picture, you can use Paint (part of Windows) to crop your picture using the rectangular selection tool and then selecting the "crop" button and then save the new cropped picture.

 

[Sunset]

OP for photos that you want to use as background images, or are really good.
It would be better to send them to your laptop via bluetooth, as there would be no need to send a lower quality.

You could try emailing them at high quality as well, if your email allows it.
When you send medium, you are losing some quality as the image gets compressed to a smaller size.

Once they are on the laptop, you can then edit the high quality image to change the aspect ratio.

 

[OldShooter]

Hmmm ... things getting a little confusing here.

Matching "Aspect Ratio" is definitely the key. This is the ratio of horizontal pixels to vertical pixels on a photo or a screen. 16x9, as stated, is an example. A typical older computer or laptop screen might be 1024x768, for a 4:3 aspect ratio. An old 35mm film negative image will be 36x24mm or 3:2.

"Pixels" are much less important. Your computer will properly render a 16x9 photo on a 16x9 screen even if the actual pixel counts are different. The best rendering, though, will occur if the pixel counts are the same. You will probably not be able to see any difference between "good" and "best" though.

OK, how to do this? There is a very simple photo program called IrfanView. It is free software from a guy named Irfan, who lives in Bosnia. Download here: https://www.irfanview.com/ After you have loaded it, drop down the "View" menu and select "Resize/Resample." This is where you can change the aspect ratio of your phone photos. What you will be doing, though, is cutting things off at the edges rather than stretching or shrinking. (It is possible to stretch and shrink but you probably won't like the results.) Just play with that Resize/Resample thing until you understand it and can do what you want.

Good Luck.

 

[CaptTom]

Just to clarify what I think Sunset meant, e-mail software will often "shrink" the pictures to make the file smaller for sending.

This is different from the "quality" setting for the compression (JPEG, for example) process, although both do make the file smaller.

The phone will probably take a very high-resolution (number of pixels) image. It's a big file, even though it's compressed (high, medium or low compression.)

To make the file even smaller, the e-mail package will essentially shrink the photo, too. Like the difference between an 8x10 photo and a wallet size. You simply can't blow the wallet-size photo back up to an 8x10 without it looking grainy.

The weak link is the e-mail software. Some allow you to send files without shrinking, but that's not universal, nor is the terminology they'd use for that.

Far better to find a way to just copy the picture file, and leave e-mail out of it. iPhone and Android both allow you to synch photos and other files to their cloud, which you can get to from any computer. You can also transfer individual files via bluetooth if your computer supports it. Or use third-party cloud services like DropBox.

 

[street]

WOW! Everyone thanks for the information that will do the trick the way it looks. Thanks

 

[Sunset]

Hmmm ... things getting a little confusing here.

Matching "Aspect Ratio" is definitely the key. This is the ratio of horizontal pixels to vertical pixels on a photo or a screen. 16x9, as stated, is an example. A typical older computer or laptop screen might be 1024x768, for a 4:3 aspect ratio. An old 35mm film negative image will be 36x24mm or 3:2.

"Pixels" are much less important. Your computer will properly render a 16x9 photo on a 16x9 screen even if the actual pixel counts are different. The best rendering, though, will occur if the pixel counts are the same. You will probably not be able to see any difference between "good" and "best" though.

OK, how to do this? There is a very simple photo program called IrfamView. It is free software from a guy named Irfan, who lives in Bosnia. Download here: https://www.irfanview.com/ After you have loaded it, drop down the "View" menu and select "Resize/Resample." This is where you can change the aspect ratio of your phone photos. What you will be doing, though, is cutting things off at the edges rather than stretching or shrinking. (It is possible to stretch and shrink but you probably won't like the results.) Just play with that Resize/Resample thing until you understand it and can do what you want.

Good Luck.

+1
I've used irfranview for a decade or more, it's a very useful program and can do batch operations.

 

[OldShooter]

A couple of comments on "shrinking" images.

First, the phone's image has far more pixels than the number of pixels of a computer screen. It is going to get shrunk somewhere along the way before it is rendered on the screen. So if you are simply transferring the photo to view it on the screen, you might as well shrink it before you send it and save some time. Determine your screen resolution and make sure that both dimensions of your shrunken photo are still larger (in pixels) than your screen pixel dimensions. Then you will lose nothing of any practical value in the image.

Re quality, a JPG is an imaging spec that includes what is called "lossy" compression. IOW, all of the photo's pixels are not necessarily rendered as they came off the camera. For example a white pixel with RGB value FFFFFF and an indistinguishably white pixel with value FEFEFE will be lumped together. As @CaptTom points out, the "quality" setting for JPGs is a surrogate for the amount of compression. Higher quality means larger files = less compression. But, again, for viewing on a computer screen this really doesn't matter much. It's probably impossible for anyone to achieve enough compression to be detectable on a screen.

Where compression can be bad is when the image is to be processed further. For example, if I have an image with a lot of detail in very black or very white areas, I can dig that detail out in a program like Photoshop. But if someone has compressed the file, smashing all the almost-blacks to actual black (000000), then there is nothing I can do in post processing. The detail is gone.

 

[TromboneAl]

I'd recommend installing Google Photos on your phone and your laptop.

Yes, this is amazing. It's the reason I rarely take a picture with a camera. I take a photo with my Nexus or phone, and it magically appears on my laptop.

When I just need to resize or crop a photo, I use this small/fast app, called Quick JPEG Resize and Crop:

Quick JPEG Resize and Crop - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com

 

[calico1597]

I didn't know about Google Photo! Every couple months I download all my phone photos to my laptop. If I go with Google photo and delete the photo from my phone will it delete from my laptop also

 

[Dawg52]

This is slightly OT from what you asked, but I'd recommend installing Google Photos on your phone and your laptop. It automatically backs up all your photos and syncs them between your phone and your laptop, so you won't have to bother with emailing pictures from your phone. It's free and is a great way to ensure all your photos are backed up and accessible from anywhere.

I downloaded the app to my phone and it shows backing up the photos, but when I try to view the photos through https://photos.google.com/ on my laptop they are not there. Any idea why?

 

[street]

I didn't know about Google Photo! Every couple months I download all my phone photos to my laptop. If I go with Google photo and delete the photo from my phone will it delete from my laptop also

That is a great question. I haven't had time yet to download but I would like to know what happens if you delete from phone if it deletes from your laptop also. If you find out please post the results.

Thanks

 

[Dawg52]

That is a great question. I haven't had time yet to download but I would like to know what happens if you delete from phone if it deletes from your laptop also. If you find out please post the results.

Thanks

I figured out my problem. Although the photos appeared backed up, there are a couple of switches that needs turned on for complete backup to the website. I only had one turned on. So after turning this on and completing the backup process it said I could delete all the photos from my cell phone to free up space as the photos are safely backed up to the site. I didn't delete any but their statement implies photos won't be deleted from the website when you delete from your cell phone. Which makes sense.

 

[omni550]

I figured out my problem. Although the photos appeared backed up, there are a couple of switches that needs turned on for complete backup to the website. I only had one turned on. So after turning this on and completing the backup process it said I could delete all the photos from my cell phone to free up space as the photos are safely backed up to the site. I didn't delete any but their statement implies photos won't be deleted from the website when you delete from your cell phone. Which makes sense.

Dawg,

Can you please explain further about these switches that need to be turned on? OR perhaps provide a link to an article or something?

Reason I"m asking, thought I'd backed-up photos to my laptop from my phone a few years ago. I verified they were on my laptop. Then went on my phone and deleted them...which (unbeknownst to me) deleted both sets of the photos -- all 2000+ pictures, gone for good.

omni

 

[Dawg52]

Dawg,

Can you please explain further about these switches that need to be turned on? OR perhaps provide a link to an article or something?

Reason I"m asking, thought I'd backed-up photos to my laptop from my phone a few years ago. I verified they were on my laptop. Then went on my phone and deleted them...which (unbeknownst to me) deleted both sets of the photos -- all 2000+ pictures, gone for good.

omni

They're not backed up to my laptop's hard drive, but to Google's cloud. And I access the photos through https://photos.google.com. Perhaps you can download from there to your hard drive, haven't looked into that.


See link below for troubleshooting. Go to 'check your backup settings'. Basically on your cell phone google app you want the 'back up & sync' on and the 'cellular data back up' on. I didn't have the 2nd one on originally.

https://support.google.com/photos/a...pic=6156061&vid=0-1114737141334-1521986060575