Resizing for printing

[CBass]

Ok i have Elements 5.0 and i am editing some shots i wish to have printed to give to a friend. Problem is i am unclear on how to properly resize them for printing purpouse. For aurguement sake lets use 5x7 as the sample size. When i go into resizing there are two options to resize pixel and doc size. If i switch Doc size to a 5x7 what should i change the pixel setting to or does it change on its own? Also once i do that and i go to save i get a Jpeg options window. From there i can change Image Options, Format Options and Size, the size being the kbps or mbps. Any help would be great thanks in advance.

[laawaaris]

instead of resizing the picture, i think the correct method is to CROP the picture

i dont use Elements, but I believe there should be a CROP tool in the Tools palette ... you should be able to select this tool and constrain the crop to 5x7 ... just drag it over the photo too put the crop in effect

the method you are suggesting is not what you are looking for ... if you RESIZE the photo to 5x7 you are just stretching the picture in height and width, thereby causing distortion and creating a funny looking photo ...

the native resolution of your photo is for a 4x6 print, so you must crop the photo for any size that is not a multiple of 4x6 ....

[DigiSLR]

I tend to print my photos in either 4 x 6 or 8 1/2 x 11, sometimes both.

If I crop for 4x6 how bad will the photo look if I want to print it borderless at the higher 8 1/2 x 11?

I'm getting tired of saving every photo in 2 crops.

[laawaaris]

there are not enough examples of croping that I have seen, but it really depends on your photo

if you took a photo of a little boy and the boy fills up the entire frame of the picture, then when you crop you run the risk of cropping some of his ear, forehead, chin or whatever
if you took a full body shot and you cropped, then you may run the risk of cropping fingers and toes

again, it depends on your photo - i have noticed that many sometimes when I crop I can still keep the feeling that I was looking for ... if not then I add a white border around the photo so the size is what i am looking for

your foto should natively be in 4x6 size without any cropping ... if you are having to save two versions i would say that you could try simply not saving the photo after cropping ... perform the crop in photoshop and print directly from photoshop (without saving)... once the photo is printed, just undo the crop or do not save the file and you will have one and only one version to maintain

just a thought ... i know others will have differing opinions

[Coelus]

You can always adjust your size in the print screens also, assuming your aspect ration is the same. I have always assumed that if your printing eaqual or smaller image of your original than you shouldn't lose image quality; I may be wrong on this.
Ex. Lets assume our original size is 16X20. We should be able to set our print size to 8x10, on 8.5x11 paper not scaleing to fit paper, and not lose resolution. But if we take a 4x6 image size and try to print it on 11x14 we will lose a ton of resolution. Am I thinking right on this?

[laawaaris]

I don't have photoshop in front of me right now, but I think when you up-sample your picture from size 4x6 to 11x14 you can still have a really good image quality as long as your resolution is high enough.

If you resolution is 300 dpi then you can essentially print your picture out of the camera as high as 24"x36" and you should not have any problems.

In fact, I have had pictures that were shot at 96 dpi that I scaled up to 18"x24" and they looked just fine. After that size though, it started to look a bit digitized.

I think with the way digital works, its your pixel density (dpi) that really determines how large prints you can make.

When I drive around I see billboards on the road that obviously have graphic elements that were created with a camera (photos). I don't know what the resolution is, but I have never heard of a resolution higher than 300-360 dpi - so I imagine the photo you take with your camera might be able to make it to a billboard if you want.