Changing background picture size

TR
Posted By
Tricia_Roush
Oct 27, 2003
Views
361
Replies
6
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Closed
Okay, I have this beautiful picture of my daughter that I accidentally took 🙂 I did the tutorial where you make a ellipse and let the background picture show through (using "Group with Previous" and Alt-Backspace to have the picture show through). However, when I copy the picture to my new project, it is too big. On the 6 x 6 canvas I can barely get her face. I want to get her whole head in the elipse, and then blur the edges for a nice fade in. How do I get the picture of my daughter to be smaller when I copy it into my ellipse project?

The original picture is a jpeg thats 1280 x 960. I’ve read the "resizing" stuff several times, but it still doesn’t make any sense to me. And I can’t seem to figure out how to resize the picture inside my new project. It looks like I’ll have to resize the "original" (saving it off to a different name, of course) and then copy that in.

I’ve had Elements for years (ever since 1.0 came out), but I’m really just starting to learn this stuff.

Oh, I have Elements 2.0 on a Windows XP Pro machine, if that makes any difference.

Thanks for any help,
Trish Roush
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background change picture size

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BH
Beth_Haney
Oct 27, 2003
First, Trish, just for safety’s sake, convert that JPEG image into another format like TIFF or PSD. Especially when you’re working on a project that’s requiring a lot of "fiddling" to get it right, you’ll want to make sure you’re using a non-lossy format. And work on a copy, too, because you said that picture was good by accident, so you don’t want to mess up the original! 🙂

Check the resolution of both of the image files you’re working with. It sounds as though the resolution of the image of your daughter could be of a higher resolution than that of the background. When you merge two images, they do have to be the same resolution, or the one you’re moving will readjust itself to match the resolution of the new background. For example, if the picture of your daughter is set to 300ppi and the background is only 100ppi, the picture of your daughter is going to wind up appearing three times as large when placed on that 100ppi canvas. Without more numbers to go on, I can’t give you much more help.
TR
Tricia_Roush
Oct 27, 2003
Beth,

That was it… I did convert it to a PSD before messing with it – I’ve learned that much lurking here in the newsgroup. ;-)I’m still not sure when I should and should not have "Resampling" checked, but I did get them both to the same resolution and that fixed the problem..

So, some other questions on a related note…

1. Should I have my new project that I’m importing my picture into have the same resolution as the photo? The tutorial said that it really didn’t matter what the resolution on the new project was.

2. Is there a way to have my ellipse automagically centered on my canvas? (I want to do the Gausian blur on my ellipse layer, but I think my ellipse needs to be centered on my canvas.)

3. Is there a way to get my picture to automagically center on the canvas when I move it to my project?

So much to learn, so little time. But I’m loving learning this stuff with layers. The see through thing is cool. I would love to share my little project when I’m done. Is this an appropriate place to post links to pictures? (I’ll probably have more questions about saving it off for "web size" when I get to that point. 🙂

Thanks so much!

Trish Roush

P.S. I absolutely LOVE that I can point my newsreader to adobeforums.com and read/post to the forum. Whoever thought of that should be given a prize! Way better than trying to read at the web site. Way to go Adobe!

wrote:

First, Trish, just for safety’s sake, convert that JPEG image into another format like TIFF or PSD. Especially when you’re working on a project that’s requiring a lot of "fiddling" to get it right, you’ll want to make sure you’re using a non-lossy format. And work on a copy, too, because you said that picture was good by accident, so you don’t want to mess up the original! 🙂

Check the resolution of both of the image files you’re working with. It sounds as though the resolution of the image of your daughter could be of a higher resolution than that of the background. When you merge two images, they do have to be the same resolution, or the one you’re moving will readjust itself to match the resolution of the new background. For example, if the picture of your daughter is set to 300ppi and the background is only 100ppi, the picture of your daughter is going to wind up appearing three times as large when placed on that 100ppi canvas. Without more numbers to go on, I can’t give you much more help.
CS
Chuck_Snyder
Oct 27, 2003
Trish, you gave us the pixel dimensions of the photo of your daughter (1280×960) but what are the pixel dimensions of your ‘6 x 6 canvas? (You can find that by going to Image<Resize<Image Size.)

Chuck
BH
Beth_Haney
Oct 27, 2003

1. You’ll want to go with a resolution adequate to give you a good quality print. The target range is between 150 and 300ppi, with most people preferring something closer to 300. I answered in that way, because I still don’t know what the resolution is of the images. If the resolution of your daughter is the higher of the two, then I assume you’d want to keep the higher resolution for the background area.

2. I can’t answer this – I don’t think – because I don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do. Try the trick for #3 and see if it works.

3. When you move the second image onto the first, hold down the Shift key, and the image being moved with automatically center on the canvas.

And could you please turn off the automatic quotes? That causes a lot of scrolling up and down when I try to review what you’ve said so I can answer! Thank you! 🙂 (Those of us on the forum know what we said!)
CS
Chuck_Snyder
Oct 27, 2003
Trish:

I’m not Beth, but here are a few suggestions anyway (and I see that Beth is responding also)

1. Should the resolution be the same? Well….not necessarily. If you want the imported picture to fit exactly in the same space, they should have the same pixel dimensions. On the other hand, if you want the imported image to take up only a small portion of the canvas into which it’s being imported, the imported image should have smaller pixel dimensions. If the canvas into which you’re importing is essentially a blank, I would make my upward adjustments to that one and leave the picture of your daughter at full size; you’ll need all those pixels to make a good print.
2. Re centering the ellipse: it’s not exactly ‘automagic’, but you can
turn on the view of your grid and drag the zero point on both axes to the center of the image, then move your selection around with the arrow keys until you can see that it’s balanced around the midpoint. It’s a bit tedious, but it can get you close.
3. As Beth suggests, holding down the Shift Key while dragging the imported image onto the canvas with the Move (4-pointed arrow) tool should center it for you.

Enjoy!

Chuck
TR
Tricia_Roush
Oct 27, 2003
Okay, so the new project’s resolution was 72 ppi and my JPEG was 213 ppi. I saved my jpeg as a PSD and made it 72 ppi so I could work with both of them without having the sizing problem. That worked.

I think I didn’t understand resolution vs. dimensions. That’s a little clearer now.

Mostly this is a learning project (I let Walmart print my prints), but next time I’ll know to go with the picture’s resolution.

I was doing a Layers tutorial where you make a "hole" so you can see a picture through the hole. I wanted my ellipse centered on the canvas so when I did my "gausian blur" the edges of my ellipse it blurs nicely around my daughters face. I ended up turning on the rulers and futzing with the ellipse until it looked pretty much centered.

And it worked! I am way surprised. I’ve done tutorials before and then tried to apply them to my own stuff and never been able to make them work.

Here is the final result:
http://home.comcast.net/~pnt.roush/Ellipse-Toni.jpg

Sorry about the quotes… Some groups like them, others don’t…

Gotta run. My daughter just woke up very grumpy from her nap.

Thanks for the help. I am sooo happy with the results!

-Trish

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