Print Quality question

[stef24]

Could some one provide me some advise about having photo's printed.

I use a company which allows upload via the net ... the problem is that i have foto's which, according to their site will come out only in mediocre quality, at the smallest print size.

www.imagephoto.be

im talking about photo's that were touched up in the workshop ... is there any way of altering the pictures, increasing the resolution, so that a better print quality is achieved?

thanks
Stef

[adam]

"im talking about photo's that were touched up in the workshop ... is there any way of altering the pictures, increasing the resolution, so that a better print quality is achieved?"

You would need to contact the member directly to discuss having a larger sized verson created of your photo. The images displayed on TrekEarth are too small to be printed.

[Madness]

unless you want a mosaic ;)

you could interpolate the photos using photoshop or some other editing software but you probably won`t be happy with the results

[BobTrips]

I think there was a little confusion on Adam's part (or maybe mine). Your own photos? Correct?

If so, give us some more info.

What kind of camera? If digital, how many pixels?

If film, what sort of scan?

Additionally, some people think that anything printed at less than 300 dpi is crap. Others are quite happy at 240 dpi.

If you're talking about your Mekong River picture, you might be quite happy with a 150dpi print. Low detail pictures do quite well from lower dpi files.

If you've got an inkjet, do a test. Print your picture at various sizes and see what you think.

Then get a nice lab quality print made.

[stef24]

yes i was thinking about my own pictures. its a digital ixus, but unfortunatly the shots were not taken at max resolution ... thanks all for the info.

[BobTrips]

Digital cameras store a LOT of information along with the picture when they take a photo. This information is in something called the EXIF file.

The file contains things such as the date and time the shot was taken, zoom length, shutter speed, aperture, flash yes/no, etc.

It also tells you the number of pixels (width/height) of the shot. You can use that data to calculate the potential print size of your shot.

BTW, there are software routines to upsize small files for producing large prints. They might work very nicely for your Mekong River shot.

[ldallara]

How to you up size an image in Photoshop ???

[Madness]

menu: image - image size

[BobTrips]

Upsizing a little, sure just upsize.

If you want to upsize a lot there are many issues involved. I'm only mildly acquainted with the techniques and the different approaches, so I'm not a real source of information.

If you want to do more than a small upsize I'd suggest you go to www.dpreview.com and do some searching. You might want to start with the 'Printing' forum. Also check the 'Pro' forum. (People there really appreciate it if you search first, post only if you don't find your answers.)

[stef24]

but does that create half decent results? im pretty amazed that a picture taken on medium resolution with a 3 mpixel camera, produces what is basically a bad result from a decent lab

seeing this, i would not even try to upsize an image with the aim of prining it. or should i?

thx for all your advise about software - Photoshop Elements is truly great id recommend to anyone!

[mdchachi]

How many pixels your camera has is irrelevant if you only took them at a low resolution or if you lost resolution later when the photo was touched up. I guess if it were me, I'd try experimenting with some of the upsizing mechanisms that were mentioned to see if the results are acceptable. I'd also print the original as-is for the sake of comparison.

[BobTrips]

Some pictures lend themselves to printing with few dots per inch (DPI). Images where there is little important detail (e.g., most portraits) will often upsize quite nicely.

Images where detail are important (look at some of Adrian's landscapes) just won't upsize well.

Upsizing creates new pixels/dots to fill in the space between the existing ones in order to avoid 'pixelization' - that blocky look you've probably seen before.

Upsizing can't create detail that wasn't captured in the original image.

In general, shoot at the highest resolution that your camera is capable of capturing. If you must decrease file size, do more compression. It's the best of the unfortunate choice with which you might be faced.

[Madness]

lot`s of theory and comparison tests @

http://www.rogercavanagh.com/helpinfo/04_01_upsizing.htm