pixelation

TH
Posted By
toni_heinen
May 31, 2005
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528
Replies
10
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Closed
i’m trying to enlarge a photo, and getting really bad pixelations. i had photos developed on CD, so I’m using one of those. I’m also cropping the pic and then enlarging it

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DM
Don_McCahill
May 31, 2005
How much larger are you trying to make the image? It is impossible to greatly increase the size of an image without losing quality. What are the pixel dimensions of the original image, and how large do you want to make it?
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Jun 1, 2005
Often, photos on CD include a low-resolution thumbnail image and a higher resolution image. It’s possible that you might be opening the thumbnail instead of the main image file, which is probably in a separate subdirectory. What is the resolution of the image you are opening, in pixels?
TH
toni_heinen
Jun 1, 2005
the original image size on the CD is 6.39M 1818 pixels wide by 1228 pixels high, resolution of 96 pixels/inch.

want to crop a part to about 669 pixels w x 513 pixels h (same resolution of 96 pixels/inch) and enlarge this to an 8×10.

i’ve tried changing the resolution and it’s still very grainy. i’m not sure if it’s the developing on CD that’s caused this or if it’s just that I want to enlarge a small part of it. I will say that looking at the picture in general at it’s original size, even that looks very grainy.
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Jun 1, 2005
Toni, the image is about 2.1 megapixels, which means the whole image will just barely have enough resolution for enlargement to 8×10. Cropping that down to 669×513 means that at 8×10 the resolution will only be about 65 pixels/inch, which will look very blocky and pixelated. What I would suggest as an improvement (and it may still not be satisfactory) is that after you have cropped it, go to image > size; with "resample" unchecked, change the long dimension in inches to 10" (the short dimension will be a bit under 8" because your 669×513 pixel dimensions are not in an exact 10:8 ratio); now check "resample," pick "bicubic smoother" for the method, and change the resolution to 300; and click OK. This will do about the best possible for making a big picture out of few pixels, but it won’t be perfect.
TH
toni_heinen
Jun 1, 2005
thanks…that did help, but as you said…it’s kinda crappy. do you think it would make a difference to have a print made and maybe scan it or just get a new CD made? to me all the pics seem somewhat grainy.
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Jun 1, 2005
Toni, if the image is from a film negative, by all means have the cropped version printed and then scan at 600 dpi. If it’s from a digital camera, as I suspect, this won’t improve matters, however.

There are loads of things you might try to reduce the "graininess" of digital images in general, but none of them will give you new, accurate pixels. You can often improve the look of digital images by first applying a very slight Unsharp Mask (radius under 1px (try 0.5 or 0.7), threshold 0, amount 50-100%); then blur them very slightly with Gaussian Blur (try amounts ranging from less than a pixel to two or three pixels and view at 200-400% to see the effect, then examine at 100%); then a stronger Unsharp Mask (radius maybe 3-5px, threshold 0, amount varies). If you are printing to an inkjet printer, use stronger setting than you would expect to like for the final Unsharp Mask, as inkjets often benefit from a bit of oversharpening. Also, you may want to try resampling up with bicubic or bicubic smoother first to a size that gives you 300 px/in at your final print size, then try some or all of the routines above. Experiment!
TH
toni_heinen
Jun 1, 2005
it’s actually from 35mm film. i want to get a digital in the next month or so…i’m looking at the canon s2 that’s coming out. i like photography and want to learn more and also learn to use my photoshop. you can see the pic i’m trying to crop and enlarge (pict 04 in the folder labeled-trying to enlarge) at the following <http://photos.yahoo.com/toni_heineken> i’ve also put up some other ones from the same role. these have been directly uploaded from the CD
DM
Don_McCahill
Jun 1, 2005
If it is from film, then you could have a print made and scanned and get better quality. Enlarging a 35mm negative too much will lead to grain, rather than pixelization, but I suspect you will get a better result.
DR
Donald_Reese
Jun 1, 2005
Toni,i would guess that your original neg has much more info to take advantage of ,than you are getting on that cd.it appears they did lower res scans that could be improved greatly with the use of a film scanner,such as the nikon ls 4000. When i scan a neg or slide,the file size is either 50 or a 100 megs,not 6 as you mentioned. now if you are poorly focused on your shot,all the resolution is not going to help.

Looks like your first digital choice will get you going with lots of versatile features.i was recommending that camera to point and shoot friends as a good possibility when i saw it on B&Hs site recently.decent value for that optical range.good luck with it.
MD
Michael_D_Sullivan
Jun 2, 2005
As others have said, the photo shop did a lower resolution scan than it could have done; this is typical when one gets the "film on a CD" option. I recently bought a film/slide scanner (Nikon Coolscan V) that does up to 4000 pixels/inch — this produces close to 6000×4000 from a 35mm negative or slide, or 12 times the detail of your scan. I also use a plugin called Focus Magic that actually reduces out-of-focus or motion blur to improve the focus of digital images from scanned film or digicams (it actually improves sharpness, using a different process from sharpening, which creates the illusion of sharpness by increasing contrast at edges). With a high-quality scan and some careful processing, it shouldn’t be difficult to get an 8×10 enlargement out of a cropped version of the picture, either by scanning the film at higher resolution (check out professional photo labs in your area for high-res scans) or by printing from film at 8×10 and then scanning into photoshop at 600 dpi or better.

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