CJ_Schaaf wrote:
I had a series of 35mm negatives scanned by a service (@ Walmart) to jpg files and placed on a CD. . . . Note: I attempted to crop and print and the image printed out with poor quality.
As others have noted, you need to upsample your image to something in the range of 240-360 ppi in order to get a decent print on a desktop printer. Basically, you do this by changing the resolution in the Image Size dialogue (to 240 pixels/inch, for example) and then adjusting the print size as desired (leaving room for the margins your printer
requires)–be sure that both the Constrain Proportions and Resample Image boxes are checked. (Note: I’m still using PS 5.5, so the details of the Image Size dialogue may be different for you).
Beyond that, though, your image quality is inherently limited by the fact that it’s a jpeg. In the best of cases, you *might* be able to get a passable print of maybe 3×5 inches–anything larger is bound to look bad. For decent prints of photographs, especially at sizes of 8×10 or larger, you really need to be working from .tifs or some other
lossless format, scanned at a fairly high resolution–2400 ppi or better (roughly 20MB in 8-bit mode). You may need to go to a proper camera shop or pro lab for that type of scan if you’re not doing it yourself.
(Note 2: What constitutes acceptible print quality varies from individual to individual, so you may be able to get prints larger than 3×5 that are acceptable to you even someone else might consider them unacceptable.)
Craig
