Image Quality and Editing

Image quality

At Touch The Skies we promise quality. This is not just a marketing slogan. Here's what quality means to us:

  • For starters, photos don't make it to Touch The Skies if they are even slightly blurred or out of focus. This is checked while viewing the image on screen at full size.
  • Photos must also be shot in good light, though exceptions may be made here for rare subjects or if low light artistically enhances the photo.

Our editing policies

Furthermore, before they are uploaded all photos are edited to bring them out at their best. This usually involves:

  • adjustment of levels (brightness and contrast)
  • rotation to level the horizon and edge cropping, where appropriate
  • elimination of sensor dust spots (a problem of digital cameras with interchangeable lenses)
  • noise reduction (removal of excessive grain) if necessary
  • moderate sharpening.

Editing can also involve cropping to improve the composition of an image. However, it is our policy to leave generous margins around the photo subject where possible so as to maximise the layout options open to page designers. Our image collection also includes some off-centre compositions since these are useful for some page layout requirements.

Our philosophy is to supply you with images which have been processed ready for printing. We do the work so you don't need to. The only change we do not make is to convert images to CMYK colour format, because this depends on your printing process.

Some publishers prefer to do their own image sharpening. If this includes you, we can accommodate your requirements because for almost every JPEG on Touch The Skies we hold an unsharpened but otherwise identical TIFF file from which we can produce an unsharpened JPEG.

Apart from such editing, no digital manipulation of images is carried out. The exception is images in the "generic" photo category. These are intended primarily for advertising rather than editorial use and may have been manipulated to remove proprietary operator details or for wider creative purposes.