UPDIG Version 2
The Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines come from an ad-hoc industry consortium including representatives from major photographers organisations from around the world, including the ASMP, NPPA and Editorial Photographers in the USA, Associação Brasileira dos Fotógrafos de Publicidade, Association of Photographers (UK), Australian Commercial + Media Photographers, Advertising & Illustrative Photographers Association (NZ), Professional Photo Companies and Photo Agencies Association (Sweden), the Canadian Association of Photographers and Illustrators in Communication, and more.
The guidelines are an extremely sensible body of advice for anyone using digital images, but especially those who supply images for use by other people or organisations. They are very similar to the advice you can read in the various features on digital photograpy here on About Photography (see below), but have the advantage of coming from the industry.
I'd recommend all photographers to download a copy of these updated guidelines, although you can also read them on-line.
There are 12 sections to the guide, and in brief these suggest:
ICC profile-based color management should be used, with monitors, printers and, ideally, cameras using ICC profiles, and these being embedded in files.
Monitors should normally be calibrated for Gamma 2.2 and 6500K for both Windows and Mac.
Photographers should work and supply files in an RGB space, normally AdobeRGB. Files should be converted to sRGB for web use and some photo-lab printing.
Photographers should work in RAW format for shooting and editing. Files may be output as uncompressed TIFF or JPEG (Quality 10-12) for printing and lower quality JPEG for web use.
Files should be uniquely named, using only the letters of the alphabet, numbers, hyphens and underscores, NOT spaces, punctuation or other symbols, with a maximum of 28 characters plus the 3 character extension (tif, jpg.)
Resolution is given by pixel dimensions (width and height) for screen use or by physical size AND resolution for print.
Capture sharpening is needed but should not be excessive. Process sharpening should be the final stage in processing and limited to that necessary to give acceptable sharpness viewed at full size. Output sharpening should only be carried out on a layer if at all.
IPTC data should be added and include copyright and creator data, keywords etc.
File delivery may be by CD-R, DVD-R or other removable media, or by FTP or e-mail, but files should have embedded metadata (IPTC) and, if necessary, 'readme' or sidecar files.
If guide prints or proofs are supplied, their method of production should be clearly indicated.
Proper consideration should be given as to who should archive digital files, and how this should be done.
Photographers should develop digital image workflows that suit them and their clients. |
