Digi newbie help. fuzzy pictures

[SMOKEYmtbr]

Hi,
I am starting to get kinda serious about the way my pictures look. I have been messing around with B&W pics. One thing that I have noticed is when I mildly adjust or edit my pics they loose sharpness. They start to look a little fuzzy when I crop my pics and adjust brightness and contrast and stuff. I don't have a fancy set up. Just my cannon powershot A75 (3.2 mega pixels) and an ibook with iphoto. why do my pics look fuzzy when I edit them? is it the camera? is it the software? is it my 12inch screen? I am worried that when I print them out they will look out of focus. what should I do?

[Michael Fanelli]

Hi,
I am starting to get kinda serious about the way my pictures look. I have been messing around with B&W pics. One thing that I have noticed is when I mildly adjust or edit my pics they loose sharpness. They start to look a little fuzzy when I crop my pics and adjust brightness and contrast and stuff. I don't have a fancy set up. Just my cannon powershot A75 (3.2 mega pixels) and an ibook with iphoto. why do my pics look fuzzy when I edit them? is it the camera? is it the software? is it my 12inch screen? I am worried that when I print them out they will look out of focus. what should I do?

Can you post an example with the EXIF data? My very quick guess is that the images are blurry to begin which becomes more evident with post processing. The other guess is that you are having DOF problems.

[SMOKEYmtbr]

Hey thanks for replying, I just noticed that there is a forum on here for digital stuff, I think maybe I should move this post there. I never really noticed it in the first place. BTW, I have no clue what dof and exif mean!?

[another view]

You don't need to move it to digital cameras - either place is fine in a case like this but it's probably best to keep the thread together.

DOF = depth of field (how much of the area is in focus)

EXIF Data is the information about the image. Digital cameras record the shutter speed, aperture, ISO speed and a ton of other things and you should be able to look at them with most image editing programs. If using the software that came with the camera, you should be instructions for it somewhere. This will tell us a lot of things about the image, and a combination of this info and the shot will really help narrow down what's happening.