Resizing and printing

DP
Posted By
david_pullum
Jun 5, 2004
Views
76
Replies
1
Status
Closed
Hi

I would like to know more about resizing as it seems a fairly complicated this in Elements.

Basically I have 2 scenarios.

1. Picture taken normally , a small amount of cropping necessary but not much. I resize it to 300ppi and the dimensions I get are 8.5 X 6.5 inches.
Does this mean that the photo can not be printed any bigger than those dimensions? I have not used resize picture when resizing as I find it distorts the photo.

2. I have cropped right into the picture to take a particular bit of it out. I resize to 300ppi and the dimensions I get are 2.5 x 3.5 inches. How can I resize this to say 7×5 without distorting the picture.

I guess I dont really understand the relationship between the dimensions when it comes to printing. I do not have my own printer and purely rely on a professional outfit to print them, Therefore I cant afford to send pictures off for testing prints.
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MM
Mac_McDougald
Jun 5, 2004
You only have x number of pixels in your original picture.

As you have found, resizing with Resample: Off, gives only a certain size at a certain ppi.

If your final image, whether from original shot/scan, or from cropped one, is less than the ppi you really would like, you have only two options:
– print at less than "optimal" ppi (300 is a preferred "target", but not written in stone, you may find that 200 is acceptable)
– upsample (increase ppi at same output size). This adds interpolated (made up) pixels. No, it’s not preferred and can’t achieve same quality as using original sampled pixels output by camera or sanner — but it can sometimes help. While it makes an image smoother, it also makes it softer.

PPI vs print size is one of the immutable laws of digital imaging. You have x by x pixels in any original image. As print size increases, ppi decreases and vice versa.

And btw, yes, you should always keep Contrain Proportions ON, if you don’t want a distorted image.

M

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