Quality print from digital camera

J
Posted By
johnleavitt
Nov 11, 2003
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498
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5
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Closed
My digital camera’s top setting produces photos that are 16" x 22" at 72 dpi. What is the best way to adjust the picture so that I can print *high quality* pictures that are 3"x5" in size? I’m having a hard time getting a crisp, photo quality print from the pictures. Camera is a Nikon CoolPix with 2.7 megapix (I believe). Thanks for any advice you have.

John

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H
Hermie
Nov 11, 2003
Your photos are in Pixels, not in inches.
When you set the resolution you map pixels to print dimensions. So set the Image resolution to something like 300 PPI

wrote in message
My digital camera’s top setting produces photos that are 16" x 22" at 72
dpi. What is the best way to adjust the picture so that I can print *high quality* pictures that are 3"x5" in size? I’m having a hard time getting a crisp, photo quality print from the pictures. Camera is a Nikon CoolPix with
2.7 megapix (I believe). Thanks for any advice you have.
John
SA
Sven-Martin_Adelhoff
Nov 11, 2003
John,

for high quality you would need about 300 pixel per inch (ppi). So 3" x 5" would need 900 x 1,500 = approx 1.5 Megapixel. So just be sure that your picture has these amount of pixels. The camera setting of 72 dpi is irrelevant.

Another issue is the jpeg compression. On some cameras, you have the choice between different settings. They affect the image size, not the amount of pixels.

Sven
JM
John_Mensinger
Nov 11, 2003
Go to Image > Image Size. With "Resample Image" UNchecked, enter "300" (and ‘pixels/inch’) in the resolution field, which will give your image a print size of 5.28" x 3.84". The aspect ratio does not translate directly to 3" x 5", so to get there, you’ll have to crop a bit.
DP
Daryl Pritchard
Nov 11, 2003
A friend of mine just phoned yesterday with this very question, after having bought a Fuji S2Pro digital SLR. He was puzzled why his images were huge yet only 72dpi. I told him this must be one of the most-asked questions in the forum. So, while the above suggestions are certainly valid, here’s yet another that is perhaps the fastest way to get from point A to B:

Select the Crop tool from the toolbox. In the Options bar, set the desired dimensions to 3×5 inches and a resolution of 300 ppi. For a full-frame image that is cropped to fit the proportions, define the area to crop by using the crop tool to mark the starting corner and then stretching out the area marquee to enclose the full image, in whichever direction works best. you wish to keep. Once defined, the area marquee can be repositioned if need be. Click on the check mark and you’ve resized, resampled, and cropped the image in one fell swoop. Just be sure you save the result as a new file rather than overwrite the original.

For a 3×5-inch full-frame image, that should work fine. If you want to explore other image sizes for printing, here’s a bit more to consider…

The crop tool will resample up or down in size according to the dimensions and resolution you specify, relative to the original number of pixels in the image and the defined crop area. If you happen to define a small crop area but your cropping dimensions and resolution establish a pixel density exceeding that of the defined area, then an upsampling will be peformed and you may get an inferior image.

Here’s an example using easy number: Let’s assume your original image is 10×10 inches at 100ppi, for an image density of 1,000,000 pixels (1 Mpx). If you define crop dimensions of 5×5 inches at 200ppi, your crop tool could still be used to draw out a marquee to the full perimeter of your image, since the pixel density at that setting is equivalent to the source image. However, what if you only wanted an area of your image that is 5×5 inches centered on your image but at a higher resolution of 300ppi so as to improve print quality? Well, 5×5-inches @ 300ppi equals a 2.25 Mpx density, which exceeds the amount of data provided in your source image. So, any cropping to that specification will mean new data is created by interpolation, in turn providing a lesser-quality image. The smaller the area of your image that you mark off with the cropping marquee, the greater this effect and worse the end image will be.

It helps to understand beforehand how much data you have to work with in your image before performing any resizing or resampling. That is the value of using the Image Size dialog. With resample unchecked, changes in the available parameters will show you what your source image can provide as is. Once you have a firm grasp on these relationships, use of the Crop tool becomes more intuitive.

I hope that’s not too confusing…I’ve posted more here than you asked for mainly because the topic is so commonly encountered.

Regards,

Daryl
L
Lundberg02
Nov 11, 2003
Maybe it would help new owners of digital cameras if a new forum were created with only one topic, "Digital Cameras Take Pixels, Not DPI"
Maybe it would help even more if I would stop using the subjunctive.

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