Question about photo editing

[Rex2342]

I got an email from RCCA and they want to put my Savage into their Readers Rides section but they want better quality pictures. They say they need to be 300dpi? for them to be printed into the mag but I don't know what dpi is! I have photoshop 7.0 and can resize and mees around with it some but not allot. The only thing I can find is the pixels per square inch and when I increase them to 300 the pic gets huge. How do I do increase the quality with increasing the pic size?


BTW my camera is a Sony DSC-P52 digital and I no longer have the pic on my memory stick.

 

[Rolex]

You're in the right place. DPI is dots per inch. The more there are, the crisper the photo will be when it's reduced by them for the mag.
If that's what they want, then that's what you send them.

 

[Rex2342]

When I make it 300 pix per suare inch the pictures get really big. Do I send them huge pics and let them resize them or should I resize them before I send them again?

 

[Rolex]

Was the pic originally reduced from the original camera size?
With a 3.2 Mega pixel image, my cam photos are about 4 times the size of my monitor.
Let me check something in PhotoShop and I'll get back to you.

 

[Rolex]

In the future, before you ever edit a photo, make a copy of it and keep the original one unaltered.
I just opened a cam image in PhotoShop, and it's 72 pixals per inch, 1792 x 1200.
Increasing it to 300 dpi made it 7467 x 5000. Absolutely massive.
The physical print size remained the same.
Just size it to their specs and include it as an attachment. They have to resize their pics according to the page space anyway.

 

[rocknbil]

I used to be a scanner operator and from the printing industry, you guys are mostly right but not completely.

True the DPI is related to image resolution, and 300 dots (or pixels) per inch is required to create a good halftone dot for printing. But when you resize the image, you can make matters worse.

Take an example: a 3 X 5 image at 300 pixels wide.

If this image is 72 DPI, that means 72 pixels for each inch, which makes it 4.16 inches wide.

BUT

If you resize this image to 300 DPI, so there are 300 dots in each inch, and do not resample the data, you now have 300 dots in each inch and the image is only one inch wide. (300 px wide, 'member?)

But the FILE SIZE is exactly the same.

If you were to resize this very same image, and resample the data, this will give you an image 4.16 inches wide and 300 DPI, and it will also increase the file size, but there's a catch: You go from 72 per inch to 300, where do the extra pixels come from?

This is called interpolation and is very similar to the algebraic description, a mathematical guess at what goes between.

In your original 72 DPI image, you have two pixels right next to each other and you want to now fit in and extra 228 pixels in that space. So the graphic program does some estimating of what's on ether side of the pixel to figure out what goes between. The bottom line is since there's nothing there, the best you get is a guess - a really large file size but still the same choppy image.

So if you RESIZE your image with the intent of getting the highest rez possible, you need to make sure that resample image size is turned off, then check the INCH measurement to make sure it's what you need.

In my 300 pixel wide example - the best you'll get is a 1" wide image. In Rolex's 1792 x 1200 pixel example - this gives you a 5.97" X 4" image at 300 DPI.

The reason your file size got so large is you resampled the data at the current print size. You need to turn off image resampling and it will be hunky-dory.

 

[Rex2342]

What if I just sent my images to someone else so they can do it. I tried adjusting them so they were 300dpi but then I resized them so they weren't so big but RCCA says they are to small now. They need to be at least 5x7@300dpi

 

[FastEddy]

This is one reason to ALWAYS set your digital camera to the highest quality that it has. You can always make you photos smaller or lighter but you can't add something that was never there to begin with.

 

[rocknbil]

Rex, JUST GO RESHOOT THE PIC!

When you do, be sure to choose your setting correctly. RCCA had an article a few months on what they consider "bad pics." Put it on a non-confusing background, not in tall grass or anything that obscures the body, get down at ground level with the truck - don't shoot it from above or on a table. If you want to put it on rocks and stuff to show articulation, make sure the rocks are behind the truck or smaller so they don't dominate the image - thie pic is of the truck and not the rocks.

And when you take 'em off your camera - copy them to your HD somewhere so you can save the originals.

 

[Rex2342]

LOL it's all crappy outside right now and my body is all beat up now. I sent them those pics in like August!!! The body was brand new then and I haven't painted the one I have sitting here yet lol!! Maybe I'll paint it tonight when I get off of work and and try to snap some new pics in the morning if the sun is shining.


When a pic comes off my camera the pixel dimensions are 2049x1536. The document size is 28.4 wide and 21.3 high @ 72 pixles per inch. When I change the resolution to 300 pixles per inch the pixel dimensions jump to 8533x6400 and the document size stays the same. Is this the way I need to leave it or do I adjust the document size so it is close to the 5x7 requirements?

 

[rocknbil]

No.

When you go into the image size dialogue, UNCLICK RESAMPLE IMAGE.

Now when you enter 300 DPI in resolution, you will see the Print size change but the file size will remain the same.

Click OK. After that, go back into the image size dialogue, if the print size is too big, THEN turn "resample image" back on and enter the appropriate measurement in Print size.