Arrggh. One of my pet peeves – people who share photos in a resolution too low to allow a decent print. At that low resolution, there won’t be anything magic you can do to increase the quality and maintain the size, although there is one technique that might improve it. Is there any chance you can just get the person to send you a higher quality picture?! No, huh. Well…
First, make sure you’ve got the image saved in a non-lossy format like PSD or TIFF. If the resolution was 72ppi, chances are good it’s also a JPEG image, which loses even more quality each time it’s worked on and then resaved.
Then, in Image>Resize>Image Size, make sure the boxes for "Constrain Proportions" and "Resample" have check marks. Also make sure the options available for resampling have "Bicubic" selected. Now, start increasing the resolution in 10% increments. For example, go from 72ppi to about 77ppi. Then move up to about 84ppi, etc. Keep working it upwards, but I wouldn’t even bother trying to go anything above about 140 or 150. That’s still bare minimum for a good print under ordinary circumstances, but I doubt pushing beyond that in this case would gain anything.
The other thing you can do once you get the resolution up is to reduce the image size. To do that, you’d want to be back in Image>Resize>Image Size, but this time making sure there were no checkmarks for Constrain Proportions and Resample. Get the resolution up a little and then let Elements use the extra pixels to create a smaller image. That might improve the quality a touch, too.
Good luck. I’ve used this technique before, but I was never trying to get so much out of so little. I don’t know if it’ll produce anything satisfactory or not.
Beth
Thank you for help. I will try your suggestions.
Joe Cianciosa
concerning "increasing the resolution"…
as there are always many ways to accomplish a task in PSE, I have found that in the Image Resize box with Resample/Constrain checked, it is easier to let the program do the math. Just change the units to Percentage and replace the 100 with 110 (% that would be).
Nancy, great suggestion! As long as I’ve been looking at Elements screens, I never saw that ‘percent’ as an option in Document Size, even though it’s the first choice. Still learning something new every day….!!
🙂
Chuck
I’m with Chuck, Nancy. I never saw the percentage thing, either. That’s so much easier than doing the math in my head!
"Increasing Resolution"
I saw that in Scott Kelby’s new book, though he credits a friend of his for this "magical" technique. I have used the method to blow up a tiny portion of a photo, repeating it like 7 times with very decent results (it might very well depend on the nature of the data however).
I too am discovering new things each day with the program though I have had Version 1 since the week it came out.
Nancy
Thank you Nancy! Although I ‘m often quoted as the guy who does all this incremential upsampling 😉 , I didnot know about this function.
What a wonderful way to start this new day of hard labour!
Leen
