Terri,
It would only matter if you were trying to crop to a specific size in inches when printed out. If you wanted a 5 by 7 at print res. of 300 ppi, cropping to 5 x 7 while at 180 res. will result in a smaller print when you change it to 300. The 180 and 300 only have bearing on the printed out size. You can edit your images at 72 res. or 5000 res., it doesn’t matter. It matters when you are ready to print that image.
Great! Exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks for your answer.
Nancy and Terri, if you crop to 5 inches by 7 inches at 180 ppi using the Crop tool, the image will be resampled. Depending on how much of your image is being cropped away, that could be significant….
So, Chuck, it would make the most sense then to use the marquee tool to crop to "5×7" (ratio, not inches) and then print that at 300 dpi?
UUUHHH OOOOHHH. Chuck, that is not what I wanted to hear. Good thing I kept all my originals. Looks like I have a major re-editing session ahead. Well, I’m glad I found this out before printing them. Thank you for the information.
Terri and Chuck,
To clarify what I said…I was not suggesting using the Crop Tool, because as you said Chuck, it might resample. I always set up to work only with the original pixels.
I use the marquee tool set to fixed size if I want to crop to a fixed size. This means you are not resampling and are only using original pixels. You are cropping to a specific printed size at a specific resolution. If you change the resolution on that cropped image, the print size will change (with Resample Unchecked).Therefore the 5 x 7 at 180res would print out smaller at 300res. Set your desired resolution before you crop if wanting to obtain a printed image at an exact size.
If you are cropping for content in terms of composition and impact, that is a different situation. Crop with the marquee tool, set the desired print res. and see how large your image would print out. If the printed image would be smaller than desired, you can either lower the resolution or upsample somewhat. Basically, if after cropping for content with the marquee tool and then setting a res. between 200-300ppi, you discover your image will print out much smaller than desired, your cropped version doesn’t contain enough pixels to print out with any kind of quality (unless you add a digital border, as below).
Since your cropped version probably won’t have a traditional aspect ratio and that matters to you; like 5×7, 4×6, 8×10, OR your cropped version at print resolution is smaller than desired…you could add a digital mat of white around the image to bring it up to size (with or without digital frame).
Nancy
Nancy, exactly right – as usual!
🙂
Lou, that’s exactly how I do it, although I won’t bump it up to 300 if I’m somewhere in the 200’s. But probably no harm done in that amount of resampling.
I read your question and the answers as well. I recommend that you read about this at the following site: WWW.scantips.com
There you will find answers to your question and more without too much effort. Frank
