Digital workflow – Aspect Ratios

In this session, we discussed about aspect ratios and how it uses on photography as well as adjusting by Photoshop. The aspect ratios of an image is used to describe the proportional relationship between width and the height. It’s commonly describe by using two numbers separated by a colon for example 2:3.

                        

Common aspect ratios in photography are 2:3, 4:3 and increasingly in digital cameras 16:9. Other common aspect ratios, especially in large or medium format photography are 5:3, 5:4 and 1:1. 2:3 has become the commonest aspect ratio used by 35mm cameras, cropped sensor cameras and DSLR camera. This aspect ratio has been with us ever since Leica made the first 35mm film cameras early last century. 35mm crop sensor and full-frame SLRs have an aspect ratio of 3:2. The sensor is 1.5 times as wide as it is high.

                     

The 4:3 aspect ratio is used by micro four-thirds cameras, many compact cameras, some medium format digital cameras plus medium format film camera using the 6x4.5cm format. You can see that the 3:2 aspect ratio used by most digital SLRs is slightly longer than the 4:3 micro four-thirds frame. This many mot seem like much, but it has great implications for composition.

                                

                               

                                             

                                              

 Little gave the example of different aspect ratios, if looking at landscape and portrait format.

                         

                          

Another method of changing aspect ratios is editing it on Photoshop, using crop-function or editing on camera raw

The last function he told in this workshop was recording actions, the process to save your time when you do repetition stuff, it would record your series of actions than apply on other images. The Action such as resizing, save images, something like same process you do after finishing editing. It would help you so that you would not do it yourself repeatedly.

I like the design content of his workshop, not only learning photographic software but also understanding relevant comprehensive of photography which is helpful to know using them when doing editing as well as saving time. I think I should spend some time playing with Photoshop and get to know about how to use them in an appropriate way.

Reference:

Little, L. (2017, November 13). Digital workflow – Aspect Ratios. Lecture presented at Digital workflow – colour, bit depth & layer masks in Sion Hill campus, Bath Spa University, Bath.