FG,

Hang in there. Very soon, boom...it will just be crystal clear.

You must be printing out the image each time you do something different to know that it is grainy.

Perhaps you are just stuck on the thought of returning the image to be the original number of pixels x pixels. Banish that thought for printing. This is called upsampling and rarely produces a good quality printed image. For best printed quality, use only the pixels remaining. You have the correct aspect ratio, now just assign a resolution to determine printed physical size of image. Assuming you dragged that rectangle as far as it would go when regaining the aspect ratio...you have the maximum number of original pixels you could retain for the desired aspect ratio.

* Go to Image>Resize>Image Size
* UNCHECK resample box (if you left it checked, you would be interpolating (in this case upsampling) to manufacture more pixels based on a guess by the program) You get the best print by using original pixels, not artifical guessed at pixels.
* type in a desired dimension for the print size. Only type in one dimension, let the program fill in the other dimension. (aspect ratio again coming into play) Should you want a 5 x 7 and you type in 5, if the other dimension fills itself to read 7.5, then you just need to crop of the extra .5 after you allow the resizing.
* *I'm thinking maybe you had the cart before the horse if your objective was to print out images in standard sizes like 5x7 or 8x10.
* after typing in one dimension, both the second dimension AND the resolution change. The larger the dimension, the lower the print resolution. You should get an good print if the resolution number turns up to be 200 ppi or more (some people say about 150). If you are under 150, you can't print at that size and get decent quality. You will have to print smaller, choose a smaller number for you input dimension. Should the resolution show a number with a decimal, just backspace those decimals off of there (most printers don't know what to do with a fraction of a pixel) it will make little difference in the size of your print.

Remember to always work on a copy. Save your originals untouched, uncropped, treat them as though they were your negatives. Keep them in a separate folder. Begin an editing session with opening an image and then Image Duplicate, drag title bar of copy down to expose the original and close it to put it back in safe keeping folder.

florida_guy

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Cropping and Resizing