I am hoping that I have the correct forum I am using PS CS3 the appropriate RAW Plug-In with OS X and iMac 7,1. I shot a lot of my UW photos in Raw with my Canon G9 camera. I come out with about 12 MB pix. When I open them and do my editing in the RAW plug in they are saved as a Tiff and become these mega files of 68 MB. When I do any more editing it increases it. When I opened one up today and looked at the resolution it said 72… this is too low for printing so I upped the resolution to 240 and it made it a 553MB pix! I know that when I downsize it to 8×10 it does get smaller but doing any changes to these large files takes longer and storage will eventually be a problem. I am still new to PS and using Raw camera data and would like to learn what is the best way to print quality photos (normally 8×10 or 11×14) from these raw images without having such huge files. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
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When you change the resolution of the file, make absolutely certain that the "Resample Image:" box is NOT checked. That way you’re increasing the resolution only for when you go to print but you won’t be touching the pixels or the image size.
You won’t necessarily have to "downsize" (you mean downsample) in order to print, but you will need to crop in order to fit the aspect ratio of your print.
What is important is the dimensions of your image in pixels, so many pixels wide by so many pixels high.
Give us the dimensions in pixels of your raw files converted to PSDs or TIFFs, that’s what matters. Then we can advise you further. Megabytes and megapixels are utterly irrelevant in this context.
For instance, if your images are 3,000 by 2,000 pixels (just an example) and you set your resolution to 300 ppi, you would be ready to print a 10-inch by 6.67-inch print.
Personally, I don’t bother upsampling (or downsampling) as long as the resolution of my image falls between 240 ppi and 400 ppi at the target size of my print.
At 300 ppi you would need a 2,400 pixels by 3,000 pixels image in order to print an 8×10.
While Ramón has neatly summed up the issue, I have one question — what is "iMac 7,1"? And as a sidebar, if you are running Mac OS 10.4.x, you should be running 10.4.11. If you are running Mac OS 10.5.x, you should be running 10.5.6.
It also needs to be added that your RAW files are really just single channel grayscale files and when they are processed into tiffs, they basically triple in size. When you save them as 16 bit per channel tiffs, the size doubles again. That’s where your half your file size issue is originating.
People who normally shoot in camera jpegs are shielded from the cruel realities of actual file sizes.
Thank you everyone for your advise. Steep learning curve for me!
What I would like to do to understand this pixel dimension/ document size/ resolution business.
Yesterday I was working with a 62.5 MB photo but only 25% of it and hoping to use it in the 8×10 and 5×7 range. What I get when I open up the image size is this: Pixels W 1353 H 1704 Doc W 18.792 inches H 23.667 inches Resolution 72
So if I do not have anything, resampling etc, checked below, and I change the resolution to 300 so I can print better the doc auto changes to W 4.51 H 5.68
Which is too small for what I want
If I go back and check resample image it will let me increase the doc size and keep the 300. Pixel dimen: 2400 x3000 now 41.2 mb
So when I work with a portion of an image like this and I am printing small: Is this the best thing to do to get my 8×10 , 300 res and pixels large enough to print well??? If I do use the resample image then which do I select in the drop down box of the resample image.
In understanding this more if I changed it to 8 bit color I lose quality correct?
Neil: Mac info: Mac OS X Version 10.5.6 Model Identifier: iMac7,1
Again thanks so much everyone for all of your help! Chrisse
Resampling to get a bigger image should be avoided as much as possible.
To make a 8 x 10 print from your 1353 x 1704 pixel image, just set the Image Size to 10 inches high (leaving the Resample Image box UN checked) and you will notice that the resolution is now 170 ppi and you should get an acceptable print from the file.
If you are going to be making large prints regularly, you will want to consider getting a camera that captures bigger images from the outset.
A 12MP full frame camera produces a 4256 x 2832 pixel image, for example, which would generate a 14" high print at 300 ppi.
That figure is absolutely, utterly irrelevant figure for this discussion. Forget it henceforth. 🙂
If you still have questions after reading Ann’s post, do not hesitate to post again.
Just a little elaboration on my previous post where I wrote:
Personally, I don’t bother upsampling (or downsampling) as long as the resolution of my image falls between 240 ppi and 400 ppi at the target size of my print.
After you crop your image to the portion you want to print, go to Image Size and, with the "Resample Image:" box UNCHECKED, type your target print size in inches and see what your resolution (in ppi) turns out to be. My practice is not to resample at all if the resolution turns out to be between 240 ppi and 400 ppi at the target size of my print.
If it’s less than 240 ppi, then an upsampling using Bicubic Smoother is in order to bring it up to that range. If it’s greater than 400 ppi, then downsample with Bicubic Sharper. You don’t want to be throwing such a massive amount of data (over 400 ppi) to your printer. That’s cruelty to printers 😀 (meaning: expect trouble and loooooong printing times!).
Addendum: Ann writes that she’d be OK with an 8×10 at 170 ppi. I just typed 240 ppi as my personal lowest limit. Make a couple of prints to see what you’re happy with. 🙂
it is probably a toss-up between which would be worse: an interpolated rez-up or a 170 ppi print.
Ann, I ran some test prints last year and, I’m happy to say, since the advent of Chris Cox’s Bicubic Smoother math magic, the uprezzed (170 ppi to 240 ppi) image looks a bit better in print.
Obviously, if you have to uprez an image by more than 200% to get to 240 ppi, it’s not worth printing it. But 170 ppi to 240 ppi is not unreasonable (that’s about 41%).
Hello, thanks again for the info. I ran a double 5×7 (picture package). the image was 187 dpi but when it automated it changed it to 300 dpi. The print came out sweet! This fish eye looks like a painting like I wanted it too.
Ann, I normally use more of the photo but the fish face detail was so exquisite. I really can’t buy a bigger camera for my UW work as my carry-on camera bag with the huge wide angle lens and all the other equipment is already 23-24 lbs. I don’t have to wear weights in the water!! So I guess I will have to keep printing on the smaller side and get my moving UW subjects to take up more of the screen!
" After you crop your image to the portion you want to print, go to Image Size and, with the "Resample Image:" box UNCHECKED, type your target print size in inches and see what your resolution (in ppi) turns out to be. My practice is not to resample at all if the resolution turns out to be between 240 ppi and 400 ppi at the target size of my print."
Si, Ramon. I did read it and even copied and pasted all that is above into a Word Doc so I will have it as a reference. I appreciate your time, effort and your teaching me how to use this massive hunk of software…. I just would not know how to put that into a calculator…sorry I am not blessed like some people with knowing how to do math– that is why I asked if it was over 200%. Some of the above questions might seem dumb to you but I really don’t have the knowledge and am willing to learn.
Ann is one of the most knowledgeable Photoshop folks here and I respect her immensely. However she comes from a long film backgroujd and is brand new to DSLR. Ann is incorrect when she says
I think that it is probably a toss-up between which would be worse: an interpolated rez-up or a 170 ppi print. Basically, Chrisse needs a better camera if she wants to make prints of this size let alone 11" x 14" ones.
Ann speaks from very extensive film-scan experience, but the reality is that "uprezzing" digital camera image capture is a whole different thing than uprezzing scanned film images. Those of us who do have substantial digicam experience have found a surprising ability to successfully uprez digicam image captures.
Certainly, well-shot pix from your G9 will normally uprez to print 8x10s just fine and probably 11x14s as well. I have found however that "well-shot," especially as regards exposure and focus, is important to allow good uprez.
You need not worry about whether Ann is correct or I am – – just do it! Do to farther typical viewing distances personally I use 300-360 ppi for small prints, 240-300 ppi for 8×10 and 240 ppi for 11×14; 180 ppi for large posters.
Relative to u/w pix specifically, for myriad reasons skillful flash usage will make a lot of difference when it comes to how much one can uprez or not.
Thank you Ramon and Allen, I have copied and pasted the new comments to my doc. The last photo (barely cropped) that I worked with of course gave me so much more in rez. I looked at a few that I took of my paintings and saw why I had such a hard time with printing them. I think I really starting to understand this!
Allen, could you pls explain or give an example of what you had said:
Also be especially careful with post-process edits because uprezzing can exacerbate editing distortion.
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