When to resample??

CM
Posted By
Cynthia Merzer
Jul 23, 2007
Views
365
Replies
2
Status
Closed
Let me start by saying that I have been thrilled with the images that I have seen come off of my Epson 2400, rendered in Photoshop. I attend a weekly photography class at a local museum school where images that I have brought in are often viewed with ewhs and ahhs and I even have one hanging in a museum selected in a state wide juried competition. So I feel safe to say that I must be doing something right or there is an awful lot of dumb luck at play.

Yet in our strive for excellence, there are always questions. We seek out answers on forums such as this one and often the answers beget more questions. So it is in this vein that I post this question.

Recently, I started this post on the Lightroom forum:
<http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?128@@.3bc47bb2> In answering the post, it was suggested "As long as the PPI of the image size is between 180-480 PPI you really have no reason for up or down sampling…" and "resize without resampling checked to change the ratio and density."

If I understood this answer (and I grant you that I may not have understood this answer) if I have an image that comes into Photoshop at 240 ppi and if I want to make an 8×12 print, in the image resize dialog box, plug in 8 and 12 for the height and width, uncheck resample and then the resulting ppi is 296.

But then I’ve also seen refernce to how on Epson printers, they like to be fed images with a ppi number like 180, 240, 360, 480. If I want an 8×12 print, the only way to get one of those ppi numbers is by resampling.

So, how does this get resolved? I have a feeling that I am missing something here, so can someone explain?
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C
chrisjbirchall
Jul 23, 2007
they like to be fed images with a ppi number like 180, 240, 360, 480

To be honest, that’s all theoretical. In practice you’ll not see any difference. Think of it like this: Every time you resample an image (up or down) quality is going to suffer.

The printer driver is going to resample the image data regardless – so why do it twice?

Jeff Schewe’s advice is sound – and it applies to PS every bit as much as LR. Leave "Resample" unchecked and simply set the dimensions to instruct the printer what size the output is to be. So long as your ppi is more than 180 or so your print will be fine.

You should, however, sharpen the image at the intended output size before printing. Best way of doing this is with a flattened copy, or with new composite layer (call it "sharpened for 10×8, or whatever). That way you don’t make permanent changes to the master image.
4
4merzers
Jul 24, 2007
You should, however, sharpen the image at the intended output size before printing. Best way of doing this is with a flattened copy, or with new composite layer (call it "sharpened for 10×8, or whatever). That way you don’t make permanent changes to the master image.

This I do. What I like about Jeff Schewe’s approach is that it allows you to "repurpose" the print for a different size by opening, resizing without resampling and then you can just keep re-saving to the same file instead of having multiple sizes of the same image on your hard drive.

So don’t worry about resampling or the 180, 240 360 thing. Just resize without resampling, sharpnen and you are good to go, print wise?

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