Have you tried to enlarge an image from your camera only to have it go all grainy and pixelated? Or sent someone an email with your image attached, only to find out it's so big they have to scroll around the screen to see it? Bet you have wondered why.
It all has to do with the file size and quality you have your camera set to.
In the days of film camera it was never an issue.
Film was pretty much the same size for everyone.
Digital cameras of today are full of options and default settings.
Every camera has some choice settings for your file size, but each camera maker has a different name for them.
It can be confusing, but essentially you have two options that you can change.
You will have an option for image quality.
Often you will see an icon representation of the quality.
At one end the icon is smooth, and at the other it's jagged.
This relates to the compression level of the image file (usually jpg) with the icon representing what is happening to your file.
High quality creates a larger file with fine detail that takes up more space; low quality is a rougher image but saves space.
Then there is image size.
Often this is represented by pixel dimensions, so the bigger the dimensions, the larger the image.
Obviously, the larger the size, the bigger the image can be enlarged without falling apart.
But it will also take up more space on your memory card.
You may have noticed that with the small setting you can get 600 or more images, but with the large setting it's suddenly 20 images to fill your card.
The rule of thumb is to always make your images as large as possible with the best quality.
You can shrink the image down with software but you cannot make it larger without pixelation and loss of quality.
Remember, though, when you email the image to friends or post it on a social page to shrink it down first.
Usually 600 pixels longest side is great.
When you send your file to an image site for printing, send the biggest version, even if you are not printing it very large, and it will look better.
There will be more detail and better color.
Always save your file in a safe place, back it up, and only work on copies of your original file.