Artifact - We are not talking Paleontology

And you thought I was going to have some great news about the office project. How I got it all set up and everything hooked up and running. The space I was using for my workspace is now a studio space in the house and I am all set to go. All I have to say to that is DREAM ON BUCKO!

Soooo! To have something of interest (to some maybe) I was checking some stuff and got stock on digital artifacting. Kind of like zits to a digital image.

Ok. What are digital artifacts? We most often associate them with the bleeding over of a jpeg onto a background. If you have ever used the instant alpha on a mac program (hide color in the PC world) and you got rid of all the background except some nasty looking junk around the image you were wanting to show... That is one example of artifacting known as fringing.

Technically digital artifacts, are visible defects in a digital photo which are specifically caused by the digital encoding. Most often the jpeg conversion and re-encoding anytime you open, edit, and save the jpeg again.

In the image below you can see the fringe artifacts in the white area and digital artifacts in the dark areas of the image.

The second image below shows no evidence of artifacting. Bot images have been zoomed into 150% for this example.

How do I reduce the effect of or the occurrence of artifacting?

I am glad you asked. Because there are three easy steps to reduce artifacting.

1. Capture in RAW. Plain and simple. Yes it is a much larger file but guess what braino, that means there is a lot more information for you to work with in the post production image.
2. Work in the Prophoto color space. Most cameras capture in sRGB or Adobe RGB. If you are converting from one color space, it is better to start out with as much color you can get and then pare it down.
3. Edit in 16 bit Mode. The difference here is that of a dirt road and the 5 in SoCal (that would be Interstate 5 in Southern California for those east of the rockies). Editing in 8 bit gives you 256 gradations of light where 16 bit gives you 65,532 gradations. Duh! You make the choice.

So what's the deal? Artifact or Not to Artifact.... That is the question.

It depends on what you are using the image for. There are some pitfalls with these procedures. The first and foremost is computing power. A 21 megapixel RAW image in opened in prophoto color space at 16 bit is going to be one wale of a big file. So get ready to invest in some power house computing power if yo plan on going down this path.

Second is when operating in 16 bit Mode, there are a number of Photoshop tools and filters that are not available unless you are in 8 bit. Additionally only the Mac version of PS will print in 16 bit and that assumes you have a printer that will print in 16 bit. I know it is just a matter of time when we are talking about this in 32 bit and how archaic 16 bit is. But thats the computing world.

Of course why would you want to do this for anything that only requires 72 pixel resolution in sRGB on the web or video? You would really be wasting you time so let it go. If, however you are looking to printing you images in any large format or selling as fine art, you had better twice. At least get to the drug store and pick up a tube of your favorite anti-artifacting cream because you will need it if you are careless and not practicing safe bit-busting.

Take care all... Doug