ORGANIC~LED IS THE FUTURE

18 Jul 201917 Jul 2019Mitul Tandon 1 Comment

Organic things really sound healthier. Organic foods , Organic Creams and so on. Things are really becoming organic. Well It was back in 2013 when electronics also become organic. In 2013 LED were started to be replaced by their organic version called as Organic LED or simply OLED. OLED were first introduced in Televisions similar to LED. OLED TV’s became a thing then. Sitting in the current year writing about a technology 6 years old doesn’t make a sense, right?. Well it does make sense. OLED panels and screens are being widely used nowadays so it’s important to know about them.

DISPLAY’S

It’s surprising to know that a display panel can be manufactured only in two ways. Market has been fooling it’s customers when advertising about display screens. Retina display’s , Quantum dots and what not ,they are ultimately the same thing under different names. It’s like having two passports with different names on them. That would be fun though.

Two types of technology ever invented to manufacture dislays are:-

Liquid Crystal Display with a back-light
Plasma Display (Now called as OLED )

LCD
PLASMA

LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY

The most basic way to manufacture a display screen is using crystal molecules. I warn you some science is coming your way but I will try to make it as simple as I can.

Let us do this by taking an example. Let us assume we need to manufacture a 1920 vs 1200 pixels screen. It simply means we need a screen which has 1920 pixels side to side and 1200 pixels from top to bottom. It means it has a total of 1920 x 1200=2304000 pixels. But what exactly are pixels? In a layman language pixels are nothing but dots. Dots that make up the screen. In our example our screen is made up of 2304000 dots!

Here is a fun fact Pixel was originally designed as a term for color coding in computer programming but later on it became a unit. A unit to measure quality of display. More pixels better the quality.

Continuing on LCD’s. Behind the screen made up of dots we have a back-light. The source of this back-light can vary from CCFL’s to LED’s. Nowadays LED are preferred because they are smaller than CCFL’s and much cheaper and energy efficient. Use of LED’s in the back-light is what made LCD much much slimmer than what they were. Now you know how TV’s became slimmer without exercising. This is were LED got itself into market.

Screen comprising of dot is physically made up of crystal molecules. When an electric field is applied across these crystals , they polarize and allow light to pass through them. Colors:Red, Green, Blue can mix up and make up any color. By allowing them to pass in different variation and proportion can make up any color. By not allowing to pass any color light, it produces a black screen. Which means to even produce a black color the back-light needs to be on. Without back-light the display doesn’t work. Thus consuming more energy. This is where Plasma technology is better.

PLASMA TECHNOLOGY

There are two kinds of group. One which has a leader and other members support there leader to run the group. Another type of group is in which everyone is the leader. Everyone influences the group same as another members do. Latter one is rare. Quite rare. OLED technology is the latter type. There is no back-light in OLED. Every Pixel is made up three small LED’s. Red , Green , Blue. No Electric field involved, no science to haunt. It’s much easier tech to build than LCD but a lot expensive. If we plan to manufacture a 1920 x 1200 pixel screen. It means a screen with 2304000 pixels in it. It means we require 230400 LED lights each of Red , Green and Blue.

Since we have allowed each pixel or let us say each dot to have it’s own light. It means each of dot has same influence as another. Now every dot can produce it’s own color by switching on RGB LED’s that it has, in different variation and proportion to produce all kinds of colors. But how will they produce black color? There is no filter or crystals in such screen like LCD which will block light coming from pixels. It has a very simple answer. Switch off the pixels of that part of the screen where black has to be displayed. By doing so we are saving energy. We are saving battery.

I have not talked about plasma tech yet. I decided to write first about newer version of plasma which is OLED so that we can understand the difference easily. But you will notice we have not yet used OLED anywhere we were manufacturing both kinds of displays. We used LED’s in both first back-light LED’s and then LED’s in pixels. In both tech we have used LED’s. Now let us first talk about the plasma tech.

Second kind of display which is giving every pixel it’s own light was first used in plasma tech. Plasma tech is not used nowadays. In a plasma, little cells of noble gases, usually Neon and Xenon, are excited into supercharged state known as the plasma state. In this state these gases emit ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet light itself is not visible. However pixel are coated with phosphors. Phosphors cells absorb this ultraviolet light and then re-emit it as light in the visible spectrum. All this noble gas thing takes place inside every pixel. Every pixel is coated with RGB phosphors. You will better understand in the below image.

OLED

Instead of applying Red , Green and Blue phosphorus over each dots(pixels) and using noble gases to produce light. It was better to use artificial lights like LED’s. But LED light’s were not so successful in such tech. Since this entire technology was based on organic substances this is what led to invention of OLED.

OLED is basically a LED which consist of organic compound thin layer which emit light when electric current is passed through them. OLED are smaller (almost invisible to naked eye). It’s a nano tech. Hence quite expensive unlike LED’s. Organic layer is situated between electrodes (which are almost transparent). Each pixel is made up OLED instead of noble gases and phosphorous. Each OLED can produce RGB hence it can produce any color.

When we start making OLED display’s we can arrange pixels in two forms:-

Passive-Matrix (PMOLED) :- In such form pixels are interdependent meaning changes to one pixel may affect other pixels. These changes generally occur in row or a column.
Active-Matrix(AMOLED) :- Active matrix every pixel is active and is independent. It is more commonly used form.

DARK MODE THEME

Lot of apps have been coming out with dark mode theme. What dark mode does is that it makes background black which helps to read comfortably even in night with no light. If you are using smartphone which has OLED display it also saves your battery. Because black background means most of the pixel have shut down in the background to make it look black saving you about 10-20% of your battery at the end of the day.

LET’S CONCLUDE

LCD are old but they will remain in the market forever. There has been a lot of improvement in picture quality of LCD after LED were used in back-light panel. But the picture quality that OLED brings on the table is untouchable. It is much lighter and cleaner tech. It’s ability to produce true blacks and high color contrasts means it is tech of next generation. It produces image that looks the same with different viewing angles. Now you can sit on corner seat and still enjoy the movie in movie theaters or even in your living room. The only major disadvantage OLED has in the market is that ; it is expensive.

OLED can also produce flexible screens. Curved TV’s. Fold-able smartphones. Wrist watches with display. All these inventions are being possible because OLED which speaks volumes how big of a invention it was. Next big thing which OLED can produce is “In Air Display“. It sounds like a fantasy but it is very much possible. Creating transparent display or a very slim screen almost invisible to see , only OLED can achieve that.

Below is the list of all kinds of display’s that we know exist in the market :-

LCD with LED back-light
OLED Display
Plasma Display
AMOLED Display (Version of OLED)
QLED (Quantum Dots LED) :- It is a better version of LCD. It uses quantum dots in back-light which emits better and brighter colors. It is a technology introduced by Samsung in 2018. It’s picture quality is surprisingly similarly to OLED.
Retina Display :- It is a term used by Apple. Retina display is nothing but LCD display. While Super Retina Display used by apple means OLED display.
Ultra 4k HD Display :- It is actually not a technology. It simply means a screen usually LCD which can display picture quality 4 times better than HD. HD quality means screen has 1920 x 1080 pixel. While 4k ultra HD will have 1920x1080x4 pixels which is about 8.2 million.

A last piece of information. Every LCD display has a resolution limit to it. For example 720p LCD screen means it can run a video or display a image with a maximum resolution of 720p. If you run a lower resolution video on it the results are average. Picture only looks good when displayed in 720p. This is also where OLED is better as it is self adjusting and can run all kinds of resolution.

Expensive or cheap headphones?

4 Jul 20194 Jul 2019Mitul Tandon Leave a comment

Earphones/Headphones are essential part of our life. But what are earphones? Small speakers buzzing into your ears? Yeah! They are pretty much that. But what makes them expensive? Expensive ones have better sound quality , agreed. Expensive ones are more comfortable , agreed. But are expensive ones really expensive? What makes them expensive? You cannot change basic electronics it’s same for all. Let’s find out what really makes these things expensive.

What’s inside?

All speakers work on a basic concept of converting the current coming from the source into sound energy. Sound energy can easily be produced by moment of air. Different types of sounds move the air differently. Earphones are made up of 3 major parts. One that receives current. Another that creates disturbances in air and finally the one that moves to produce different sounds that we hear.

PART 1:- If I open the first layer of the earphone. We get a plastic sheet called as diaphragm or popularly called as “cone” in manufacturing industry. Diaphragm is that final part which vibrates in different ways with different intensities to produce sound.

PART 2:- If I open the earphone further more that is remove plastic sheet or diaphragm. What I get is a brown color circle like structure which is actually a collection of copper wires tightly threaded into each other by machine. This part is called “Voice Coil”. This is the part that receives current directly from the source.

PART 3:- Magnet! Yes the third part is Magnet. Empty space in between copper wires contains a magnet. Magnet is responsible for creating disturbance in the air. When current passes through voice coil it polarizes the magnetic field produced by the magnet. The movement of the magnetic field due to current signal makes the diaphragm move in the similar fashion producing the desired sound waves.

What is the difference?

A Cone , A Voice coil , A Magnet are ultimately the only things which are inside every earphones/headphones. What makes the expensive ones have better sound quality than cheaper ones. Is it a strong magnet? Is it more number of turns in the voice coil or Is it a more sensitive diaphragm?

Let us start from magnets. Stronger the magnet means better sound quality. Stronger magnets produce strong magnetic fields which in turn makes the diaphragm vibrate at a higher intensity. Higher intensity means production of Bass , clearer beats and better sound quality. Neodymium is the strongest magnet to be used in headphones and yes it’s expensive! That what makes these little speakers buzzing into your ears expensive.

Earpiece Disc
Neodymium Magnet

What about the voice coil? Well, the larger you make the voice coil, the more power it can handle but at the same time, it also generates more heat. Smaller coils can be a little more resonant, but larger coils tend to have better control. More resonant means high frequency resulting in louder sound. Larger coil can receive almost all the current coming from the source (meaning leakage current is less) thus improving sound clarity making words more clearer coming out of the speaker. Larger the speaker ; larger the voice coil. This is the reason why large speakers sound better than headphones and latter sound better than earphones.

Larger diaphragms produce more accurate sounds. But size of diaphragm usually doesn’t matter much in terms of earphones or headphones. Most of them have same size of diaphragm in it.

consumer consumption

Lot’s of technical talking. Lot’s of knowledge. Let’s move ahead.

Consumer is usually not worried about how a thing is made or technical aspects of a product to be precise. We are worried about features that a product is going to deliver us. We are worried at what price these features we can buy and of which brand. Lastly we always look for VFM. VFM? Value for Money!. Let’s see which brand makes the best Cone , best Voice coil and best magnets that is best Speakers!.

Harman International – One of the best speakers producing company. Not many people know them by that name. Well JBL , heard of it? Harman is the parent origination of JBL. Samsung a more renowned name is the owner of Harman International. End of the family tree. Surprise! Samsung makes best speakers in the world.

When it comes to producing nano tech it’s not that easy. If you can make good speakers it doesn’t mean your good in making good earphones/headphones. Bringing that same technology to nano scale isn’t that simple because JBL headphones aren’t that good. Here is where Sony comes into picture. Sony not only makes excellent headphones but it makes them at all price ranges.

Manufacturing cheap headphones can be tricky. Cheap headphone can sound as good as expensive ones because this is electronics. It is not about using expensive stuff , it is about the that combination, that combination of turns in voice coil , type of magnet , size of diaphragm which can produce a better sound quality even by using cheap stuff. It’s an art! Electronics specially at nano scale is an art! But talking again in terms of consumer . Money brings comfort. More money you are willing to spend more comfortable product you are buying , that is such a simple concept.

DAILY USAGE

You have bought pair of speakers that goes into your ears almost daily. You definitely don’t want these to burst in your ears because ears are essential part of your body. There has always been major health concerns regarding excess use of earphones. Earphones were largely designed to give everyone there personal space. So that one can listen to music or watch movies without disturbing it’s surroundings. They were never made to always sit on your ears.

There is only one concern with these little speakers that they convert the current incoming from source into sound. This means if an earphone draws excess amount of current from source , more current means more sound that may damage your ears. This danger only exist in wired headsets because wired ones use current to send signals. Most of the wired headsets become useless because of loose wiring. Inner tech never gets disturbed. Hardly ever you will find any technical issues with your earphones it’s just the wiring that goes off. You can’t even do anything with it because they are just soldered. You can just try not to manhandle them. It doesn’t matter how expensive earphones you buy , if you manhandle them they will end up being of no use. Don’t try to re-solder the wires it is of no use, you will end up increasing the risk of damaging your ears. Just a buy a new one! And if you are sure of breaking them then just buy cheap ones and keep breaking them rather than buying expensive ones and repairing it.

is Bluetooth safer than wired ones?

No Wires. No Current. No Risk. More Comfort. Everything is great about Bluetooth technology right now. Bluetooth works on radio frequency tech and not on infra red ray so it’s safer also. Signals are transferred in form of radio waves which is not as accurate as current but works fine and does the job. So answer is YES Bluetooth is safer than wired ones and much more comfortable also. Plus you can manhandle them! Yes! No wires to break. Much more easy to carry. Yes they are little expensive than wired ones but it’s better to buy one expensive Bluetooth headset than to buy multiple cheap wired ones.

Quality of sound is always the issue with Bluetooth headsets. But with every next generation Bluetooth technology it’s just getting better and better.

If you did ask me what should we buy right now:wireless or wired one? I would say if you are die hard music lover who never want to miss a beat than wired ones should be your preference.

If your buying for causal work or watching movies and what not. I would go with a comfy wired headset to be kept at your home and wireless earphones or better known as earbuds for travelling purposes or maybe for carrying them at your work space or educational place.

What’s up with Smartphone Camera’s?

27 Jun 201926 Jun 2019Mitul Tandon Leave a comment

There are so many smartphones in the market with the same processor , same RAM , same memory , same screen. What’s the competition then? BRAND-NAME? NO!

It’s the camera that these brand makes. It’s not about megapixels in smartphone camera. A 8 MP camera can be better than 48 MP camera. It’s about the software that these camera run on. Google Pixel uses different software , OnePlus uses different software , Honor uses it’s own tech , Samsung has got it’s own. But what is the difference? Why Google is the King of the Camera? OH YES! Google is the king of the camera and that’s why Pixel Series phone are so expensive. Not all the people can save to buy a Pixel. So we are here to discuss about all camera software and different sensors being introduced in camera.

Pixel can store some serious Pixels!

OnePlus VS Samsung

OnePlus is the brand that has given the reality check Samsung needed on it’s cheap devices. When OnePlus was launched it completely took over the mid-range priced smartphone market by surprise. Though Samsung remained the winner in camera software for many years in mid-range tier smartphones and as well as in expensive smartphone market of-course trailing behind Google , because no one can beat google. Google has Pixels.

Not until OnePlus launched OnePlus 6. It was end of sale of Samsung mid-range priced phones because they were providing below average camera software. Software couldn’t auto focus , the brightness levels were low and so on. OnePlus 6 had such a great camera software that it was competing with Samsung flagship phones “The Galaxy Series” which were about 20,000 rupees expensive that is 300 dollars!. But the winner was Samsung. Samsung expensive phones ~ “The Galaxies” and “The Notes” were clear winner. Samsung had more color depth , more sharpness. Plus the low light photography or Night Mode was just outstanding in Galaxy phones. OnePlus was no were near in the competition in low light department. So at the end of the story Samsung was making very good cameras for expensive phones. OnePlus was winner of the camera department in mid-range.

But what is happening now?

OnePlus has launched it’s OnePlus 7 Pro and this time they are looking to compete with Pixel 4 (yet to be launched). Samsung has done okay and they are back in the mid-range market with there ‘A’ series phones but they just can’t make good cheap camera software’s , however there expensive phones are doing outstanding especially the Galaxy Series. They are no where near to OnePlus but are certainly doing well against other Chinese brand. Oh Chinese brand! By this we move into our next segment.

HONOR – “THE NEW HORSE”

Honor was relatively a new brand in the market when the camera war started. It has come a long way then and now stands in this market ; fighting a 5G cyber case. We are not here to talk about that. Honor has produced some series smartphones for all the budgets. It has given Apple and Samsung the run for there money.

Honor gave the word “Pro” the real meaning in the smartphone market. Every phone it launched they also launched it’s pro version much like OnePlus did. But Honor gave it a meaning, all it’s Pro phones had a better camera software which they called Pro software.

Currently in the market (with Pixel 4 yet to be launched) Honor has the best camera smartphone that is equipped with all kinds of sensor out there. It has 50X zoom which is just too much too have in a smartphone but it’s great. If you are into photography “Honor P30 Pro” is your choice but it’s definitely expensive priced as 70,000 rupees or 1,000 dollars. This is where OnePlus impress the most , it produces smartphone priced at 30,000 with camera’s as good as the Galaxies but yes you can not beat P30 Pro. Only one phone can beat it that’s Pixel 4..

New Tech In Camera Department

Wide-Angle Camera:- When you click a photograph you want to capture as much surroundings you can generally. Introduction of another lens makes camera setup to a 3 lens setup which is usually what it is nowadays. Placement of this lens is important according to me. Most of the smartphone have 3 lens in a single row or a single column.

3 Lens Setup In Samsung
3 Lens Setup in OnePlus

Placement of wide angle lens helps to get that angle from where it can capture most of surrounding. Instead of going a straight setup the more efficient is square cutout. The square consists of dual camera setup in first column and then wide lens placed in between second column providing the lens that angle that can capture more surroundings.

In-depth Sensor and Zoom:- First change was a physical change these changes are software changes. This is were competition arises. Depth in a photo is important it means more color contrast , more sharpness and overall a better image. Zoom is something every brand was looking to improve. Even a 2X zoom distorted images earlier. But it is a lot better nowadays. Honor has nailed it with there 50X zoom which works amazingly well. Oppo is another company which has done well in this department.

Asus Zenfone 6 flip flop

What a Tech! They have taken market by surprise. No one was expecting this , everyone was taken by surprise. When everyone was busy in pop up motors the Asus produced “flip-flop” Tech. It opens so many features in camera. Taking panorama standing still , let the camera rotate , why not? Since camera can rotate at any degree what’s the purpose of wide angles? Take photo at any angles!

You can shoot while keeping your phone horizontally . There is so much to this Tech that it should have broken down the market but it’s the brand under which it is launched. Asus is not really into Phones they are predominately laptop brand. If this would have been launched by OnePlus , Google or even Samsung it would have stormed into market.

Ending with Google’s Pixel

You cannot end a smartphone camera article without giving respect to Google. When everyone came out with dual camera’s , Google launched it’s weapon with a single camera and it became the “king of Camera”. This tells us software is as important as Megapixels in a camera. Google launched refurbished Pixel 3 on Amazon and it’s camera is still better than most of Samsung and OnePlus devices which is speechless.

The only thing we are waiting for is Pixel 4 at this point of time. I did not really talk about front facing camera’s. Xiaomi and Oppo are advertising under display front facing camera which is quite innovative. Innovations are getting better and better. I don’t know what we will see in the next year ,but this year has been about smartphone camera’s till now.

How to use pro mode(manual mode) in your smartphone.

8 Jun 201928 Jun 2019Mitul Tandon Leave a comment

Nowadays smartphones specially the flagships come with a interesting pro mode in the camera department. We usually use camera on default mode also called as auto mode. In this mode every setting of the camera is set to auto that is self adjusting. But in order to take the photos like of a moving car or waterfall or sunsets , sunrise ( basically talking about daily life and not going into professional photography) the pro mode or better known as manual mode does it better than the auto mode or default mode.

The basic science behind camera is how much light and from which part of the picture whose photo is being clicked enters the camera. Each and every object reflects light. When we click an image , the camera absorbs these reflected rays to create an image.To change the amount of light entering the camera, various features are included in the pro mode.

The pro mode includes following features:-

Metering:- Metering deals with what do you want to focus on while talking an image.The metering has 3 modes-

A) Center:- This will focus on the center of the image, that is, the most of the light that will enter your camera will be from the center part of the view. Intensity of light entering the camera will start to fade away as we will go far away from the center.

B) Matrix:- Default mode of metering is matrix metering. It takes light from all across the frame. It intensifies the auto focus point but apart from that brightness of view is same through out the image.

C) Spot:-The portrait mode is pro mode of spot metering that nowadays appear in the camera. The portrait mode uses the spot metering. You just have to tap on the screen wherever you want to focus and that will be the point from where the maximum intensity of light will be entering the camera. the Only difference between spot and portrait mode is that portrait mode also distorts the other parts of the image that you don’t want to focus on.

2. Shutter Speed:- Shutter speed is the duration for which the camera’s shutter is open, enabling light to hit the sensor. Although, unlike cameras, smartphones don’t actually have physical shutters instead the sensor is simply activated for the required length of time. Duration for which the shutter is enabled only during that time light coming from the view enters the camera. Shutter speed is of the form of 1/5 , 1/32 , 1/4000.

Here if we increase the shutter speed make it (1/4) it appears like the fan was moving; if we further decrease the speed to(1/30) it still has that rotational effect to it but also it has distinguished colors; if we further decrease shutter speed a clear picture is visible to it which appears to be still.

More the shutter speed less light will enter in the camera. It simply means camera will have less time to view the object thus image created will have less details about the object.

You can mess with shutter speed of camera if you want to click images of waterfall , beaches and also of any moving objects.

If we go further into photography of oceans , seas and beaches:- In order to keep water still you need to keep your shutter speed in slow range most probably anything less than 1/320 will do the job. The tough part is to click images with smooth water . By smooth water I mean image which creates an effect in which water appears to be moving or more realistic. That can be done by simply increasing shutter speed anything above 1 second will do the job.

Left image has been taken with shutter speed of 1/320 and right image with speed of 4

To summaries if we want to capture a sense of motion in an image we simply increase the shutter speed and if want to capture a more still image we decrease our shutter speed.

3. ISO:- ISO means how sensitive is the camera towards colors. More ISO means more sensitivity, that is, it will capture almost all the colors in an image. Less ISO means less sensitive, that is dark colors will be captured more easily. In a more general and simple language ISO is used to adjust brightness of image manually irrespective of the brightness of the scene that you are trying to capture. A low ISO value corresponds to 100–500 and value of ISO can be as high as 6400. But for majority of smartphones maximum value of ISO is 3200.

It can be tempting to increase ISO level to increase the brightness of the image to make it look more vibrant and colorful but increasing ISO creates noises in image. What does noises mean in Photography? It simply means your image becomes more grained but detailed.

After knowing what shutter speed and ISO does, we need to learn how we can use both simultaneously.

I personally do not recommend to keep ISO at a very high level as it would grain out a photo so it is advisable to keep it at a low level 100–200 or at auto mode. Keeping ISO mode constant and increasing shutter speed, one can click those blurry pictures which can depict the motion of the scene. It is only recommended to increase the ISO level when clicking in dark. The usage of the combination of these tool becomes handy only while clicking scenes that have some motion in it for example, a flying bird or a moving boat.

If we take an example of a moving boat , idle settings to click a picture of it would be to keep shutter speed of about 1/2500 and ISO of about 600 to click a still photo of boat so that it is clearly visible with vibrant colors. If I want to distort the image to make it look like it was in motion but to also keep the photo from blurring i would increase the shutter speed to about 1/250 and ISO to 3200. Here increasing ISO is necessary because we have increased the shutter speed, it means less light will enter the camera. We don’t have enough light in the photo to make it vibrant. By increasing ISO in such a case we can click a blurred yet vibrant photo. This is by far the best possible way to use ISO and shutter speed simultaneously at least in a smartphone. These are just recommendations what to use when. If you ask me photography is an art of experimentation, more you experiment with these things, the better you become.

4. Exposure:- Exposure is something you already use. When you click on object in an image to focus, a slider is also visible adjacent to circle, that appears on screen when you tap. That slider adjusts the exposure. Exposure means to make things brighter or darker in an image. If we increase the exposure things, that are focused become brighter in comparison to background and when we decrease the exposure the focused things become darker. In Pro mode you can set exposure manually by clicking the EV scroll bar.

The pro mode provides you with other features also like different focus modes namely Auto focus mode and Manual focus mode. As the name suggests auto focus mode will automatically focus important features in an image and in manual mode we have to ourselves decide which features we want to flag important and focus on. The part of the image where we focus the majority of the light enters camera from focused part of the image.

5. White Balance:- AWB also known as auto white balance is mode that chooses the most brightest part of the image to be white. This option works best when clicking in natural light. If you are clicking images inside your home in artificial lighting you do want to change the mode to tungsten mode. If you click on AWB different modes will appear.

Above image shows different modes that pro mode offers. Cloudy mode should be used when you click under clouds. Shadow mode is used when the subject of your image is in shade but you still have sunlight. Similarly fluorescent mode is used when clicking under fluorescent lights , flash mode is used when clicking under flash lights like studio lights or flash lights like led’s. The custom mode allows user to adjust the white balance themselves.

Summary:- If you plan onto to use pro mode in your smartphone there is no need to change each and everything. Most important is to handle shutter speed and white balance. Majority of times you can keep ISO on auto mode and adjust shutter speed and white balance to take an image. Exposure is something you will always use , there is no hard and fast rule to use exposure it works on your instincts or simply hit and trial. Metering is also something you will hardly use and will leave on matrix mode majority of the time which is completely fine.

Overall it can be fun while clicking images on pro mode, specially if you like to experiment.

BASIC IMAGE EDITING TOOLS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW

22 Mar 201928 Jun 2019Mitul Tandon Leave a comment

Now a days basic image editing tools are present on everyone’s device.Everyone likes to edit their photos in order to make it look more good before putting it up on social networking or sharing it with others. Here I talk about the basic tools which you should know about before you use them.

CROP TOOL:- One of the the most overused tool in image editing is crop tool. Everyone uses this tool to remove the unwanted part of the image. But this tool is much more than that , it can help us to focus on a part of the image that you want your public to see. One such concept that you should know if u want to make your images much more interactive and bring in that ‘Wow’ factor is the “RULE OF THIRDS”.

RULE OF THIRDS:- We can divide an image into two parts an object (or subject) and background.We always want to have a communication between object and background to make the image look more dynamic. Now normally we try to take the object in the center of the background in our image and that is where we fail to make our communication between object and background and miss on ‘Wow’ factor.

According to rule of thirds…every image can be divided into 9 parts like in the above image. In the above image our subject is the boy and the rest of the image is our background. In order to make your image more interactive we need to place our object(subject) on four dots instead of center that is object should not fall on center square it should be aligned on the corners of center square.Now it is belief that by doing this a interaction between subject and background is build which makes the image more appealing to viewer eyes.

By using crop tool we can crop away the image from one side in order to make our object fall on one of those corners of center square.In actuality try to click the image such that it follows rule of thirds that is object lies on the corner of the center square. All the image editing tools are there only if you mess up with your image so if u miss this rule while clicking an image do not forget while editing it.

2. Brightness and Contrast:-An image consists of two shades bright ones and dark ones. Contrast is to make bright more brighter and dark more darker. This creates a contrast in image. Its makes parts of the image look more separate and distinguished. However one should not add more contrast to an image as it will start to look like broken pieces that is the image will separate out which will not establish any blend between object and background in an image.

If we talk more about contrast there are mainly two types of concepts in contrast:-

Tonal Contrast:-Wonder why black and white images look better than colored one sometimes?? It is because it has very high tonal contrast and high contrast images pop out,show textures in the subject and give a feeling of edginess. High contrast is used lot in street photography and nature photography.So if you get a chance to capture an image with loads of pure black and pure white in it, go ahead increase its contrast.
Color Contrast:-This concept will help you clear when to increase the contrast of image when not to. If you ever capture complementary colors(colors that are opposite in color wheel) in a single image go ahead increase the contrast of the image. If u captured analogous color(colors that are next to each other in color wheel) try to lower down the contrast of the image let the colors blend as they will not distinguish out on increasing the contrast unlike the complementary colors.

3. Hue:-Hue is a single value in an image that gives the details about the color of the image. Hue works on the principle of color wheel again.As we increase the hue of an image, color of the image tends to change . If hue is set to zero it means color is red and as we increase the hue, color tends to move clockwise according to the color wheel. It means if hue is set to 360 again the color that we will be seeing is red.

4.Saturation:- Saturation is again related to colors in an image. Saturation means how grayer the color is , lighter red would mean low saturation and more grayer (deeper) red color would mean high saturation

CONCLUSION:-

By using HSB:-

Hue(H)
Saturation(S)
Brightness(B)

We can adjust color in the images.Hue will determine the type of the color , saturation will adjust the shade of the color and brightness will add depth to the color.

In our smart devices the applications that we get for image editing usually uses scroll bar or meter to adjust HSB. Increasing the hue makes the entire color of the image move towards the blue side , increasing the saturation will make the color more darker and less grayish and increasing the brightness will make the color less darker and more whiter. Whereas increasing the contrast of the image will make the complementary colors present in the image distinguished and will blend the analogous colors. So with the help of “Rule Of Thirds ” and HSB one can make an image more compelling to viewers eye.

VECTOR GRAPHICS Vs BITMAP GRAPHICS

6 Feb 201928 Jun 2019Mitul Tandon Leave a comment

Roaster graphics

These are pixel based.They are the array of pixels of color that form an image.Each paint dot in a pointillist painting might represent a single pixel in a roaster image. When viewed as an individual dot, it’s just a color; but when viewed as a whole, the colored dots make up a vivid and detailed painting. All the images we take from our digital cameras (including camera of our smartphones, DSLR etc) all produce roaster images. Since Roaster Images are made up of dots it’s quality depends upon size. By size of the roaster image I mean how many pixels are stored in an inch expressed as pixel per inch(ppi) and the resolution of the image refers to the number of pixels in an image.If I talk about quality of the image two terms resolution and size of the image come into play and both have different meanings.

The pixel dimensions affects the physical size but not the resolution.
The resolution affects the pixel dimensions but not the physical size.
The physical size affects the pixel dimensions but not the resolution.

By increasing the physical size of image we try to store more inches in a pixel thereby reducing its ppi and hence decreasing it’s quality. In general higher the ppi higher quality of the image.

If we continue about roaster images some software’s that deal with roaster graphics are GIMP, Adobe Photoshop. GIMP being free software is easily accessible but Photoshop has a much more user friendly interface which makes it better than GIMP.

Vector Graphics

Vector graphics are all about mathematical curves. It deals with points in 2-D or 3-D world. Vector means a line with direction.Playing with these graphics is much more user friendly. User never losses the quality of the image while editing unlike in roaster graphics which significantly looses its quality.It has the ability to reshape,connect and control points(or better called as Nodes in Vector Graphics world) to create any artwork.It is very easy to zoom in or out while editing with vectors without loosing quality which is one its significant advantage over roaster graphics.

Difference between image quality between Vector and Roaster

One of the most popular application of the vectors is logo creation.Creating mathematical objects or shapes is much more easy with vectors.Extent of manipulation provided by vectors is unbelievable.From manipulation of single point(node) in a object to shape-builder tools to merging basic shapes into exciting stuff en-thrills users to bleed more creativity.

**Swirling Infinity Logo Created with Vectors**

One last thing that we shall discuss here is file formats in which vector and roaster graphics are saved.

Roaster graphics can be saved in:-

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)/JFIF-It is a lossy compression of the image meaning it does not preserves perfect copy of the image.It provides the variable compression that trades image quality for file size.
PNG(Portable Network Graphics)-It is lossless compression of the image meaning it preserves the perfect copy of the image.It is best suited when image is being saved for editing process.
BPG(Better portable Graphics)-It replaces the JPEG extension when size is an issue because of it’s excellent compression ratio.It does not preserve perfect copy of the image.
GIF(Graphics interchange format)-It is not suited to save a photograph with a blend of colors,it is much more suited to save a simple logo,shapes or a character maybe a cartoon.

Vector Graphics can be saved in:-

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)-It is developed by W3C. It is most standard extension and is used in most of the vector graphics uploaded on web pages.

Other extensions for 2-D vectors are:

2. AI(used by Adobe Illustrator)

3. CDR(used by Corel Draw)

4. VML (Vector Markup Language)

Other extensions for 3-D vectors are:

5. XVL

6. dwf

7. dwg

At the end it’s about what you are editing and what output is required.Vector Graphics mostly fails to play with colors that is where the use of Photoshop starts. Since every image can be converted into both roaster and vectors it depends upon the editing to be performed .Playing with colors ,brightness,shadows,saturation etc Photoshop does it better while in cutting and pasting vectors are much more accurate.On a more large scale vectors are hardly used to edit and are usually used to create stuff and depict creativity on the other hand roaster based software’s are only used for editing.