 BetterPhoto Member |
Digital Printing and Resolution I have a Mavica 400, 4 megipixal camera. I am having problems with printing good photos at larger sizes, eg. 8 x 10. In Photoshop I am resizing by changing resolution to 300 and the picture keeps coming up at about 5 x 8. Can someone help with this problem? I don't know what I am doing wrong.
|
|
|
|
||
|
doug Nelson |
Four MP is more than enough for great 8 x 10's. Be sure you are shooting at the full resolution of which the Sony is capable. When you open that image in Image/Image Size, the total file size at the top should read somewhere near 4 megapixels. Also, 240 ppi is a perfectly workable input resolution for home inkjets. Put 240 in the res block, without changing anything else, and see what the dimensions come out to. In Image/Image Size, be sure Constrain Proportions is checked and Resample is unchecked. You are on the right track and asking the right questions.
|
|
|
|
||
|
doug Nelson |
Grant and I spent some stubby-pencil math time yesterday on this. I think it was worth the effort. It seems I have misadvised him. The makers of digital cameras like to tell us what print size they can yield, so some "rules-of-thumb" have been circulating around, ie. an X megapixel file yields an X-size print. What we found was that, given 240 ppi input into an inkjet printer, you generally can't get an 8 x 10 print from a file size with a long dimension pixel length of about 2275. To get a 10-inch print from 240 ppi, you need 2400 pixels across the long end. Since I worked with these matters on my job and do it as a hobby, I should have checked out these claims. If I am going to take some responsibility for trying to help folks here, I should know what I'm talking about. So, the only "rule of thumb" that has any reliability is to divide the pixel width (of a horizontal image) of the highest resolution image your camera can produce by 240. This will give a ballpark minimum quality image length out of the printer. If you're selling digital images, your buyer may demand a 300 ppi resolution, which reduces the print size. Grant was asking about some sources of information on digital imaging. Look at Steve Hoffman's page, and check out his stunning nature work, too: http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/ps1100.html#Camera
|
|
|
|
||
|
John Cummings |
Forget the math and print with Qimage. It does all the work for you. http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/ (no I don't work for them). Try it ,you'll love it.
|
|
|
|
||
|
This old forum is now archived. Use improved Forum here
Report this Thread |
||