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Lighthouse folks love to take photographs of lighthouses, and every single day photographs arrive here via regular mail or email. People take great care to mail their photos. Sometimes they are so sealed up, we find it difficult just to open the package to get at them.

Unfortunately, most people don't take the same care when emailing us photos. Even if they look great on your computer screen, they are usually low in resolution, generally 72 dpi (or pixels per inch), and cannot be used for publication in Lighthouse Digest. In order to publish or use your photos in a story, they must be actual size and at 300 dpi.

So here are some tips on sending us photos. If taking a photograph with a digital camera, be sure to take the photograph using the camera's highest setting for resolution.

If emailing us a photograph taken from a roll of film, scan the photograph at its actual size and

at 300 dpi or better.

When photos are sent to us with poor picture quality, we are unable to use them. This in turn sometimes forces us to put the story on hold or not use your photo.

Also, never send us photos embedded in the text or body of a document. Always send the photograph as a separate attachment, preferably as a JPEG file.

Again, a lot of people choose to scan their photos on a home computer and mail them to us. Be sure to use a high quality paper and check the finished print. Many times, photos – especially the ones with a lot of solid color – end up with lines. In fact, most of the photos sent to us that are printed on a home computer printer cannot be used because they are simply not of the quality that we require. You would be better suited to place the image on a CD and have it professionally printed through one of those self-serve machines at your local drug store or Wal-Mart. But, again, this only works well if you actually took the original photograph at a high resolution.

Please keep sending us those photos, but remember to send them to us in a high resolution.

Tim Harrison

Editor & Publisher

This story appeared in the May 2005 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.

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