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The Big Pixel

We review 15 new digital cameras, ranging from a $199 point-and-shoot to 4-megapixel professional models, to help you find the best deal.

Carla Thornton

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Make a Resolution

With new 4-megapixel digital cameras making the scene, you can create larger, better-quality photos than ever before. But that doesn't mean you should crank up your camera to its highest settings every time you snap a picture of Uncle Fred. Take note of a few tricks that will save space on your camera's small and expensive media card.

Want to e-mail the photo or post it on a Web site? Choose a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels, the lowest resolution most digital cameras offer (some cameras go even lower, to 320 by 240 pixels). The smaller size of the file will enable it to download more quickly.

Want to print out pictures on your ink jet printer? For snapshots it's best to pick an intermediate resolution: 800 by 600 or 1024 by 768, for example. You may also have to play with settings in your photo editing software. In Photoshop, for instance, go to Image and then Image size to choose the shot's width and height, and the number of pixels per inch to print. Anything above 150 ppi will allow good-quality photos on ink jet printers capable of 720 by 720 dots per inch or higher. (Note: Consumer ink jet printers don't make use of over-300-ppi digital images.) To attain standard photo sizes, such as 8 by 10, 4 by 6, and 3 by 5, you'll have to experiment with cropping, too. While resizing your photo, turn off your editing package's resampling feature so that you don't degrade picture quality by losing pixels. Once you've achieved the desired size, you can turn resampling back on.

Aren't sure how you'll be using a picture? If, for example, you want to e-mail a picture and frame a print of it, choose your camera's highest resolution and lowest compression. You can't enlarge a low-resolution shot and preserve quality, but you can always use an image editing program to chop down a high-resolution picture to a more manageable size later. Some cameras, such as Sony's DSC-S85 and DSC-P50, allow you to take both high-resolution and low-resolution versions of the image simultaneously.

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