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Photoshop Pro Tip: Resize your photos for print w/ out actually resizing them
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Oct 7, 2007
How many times have you opened up a photo that you took on your digital camera in Photoshop and tried to print it? I'm willing to bet that you get a message telling you that your photo is too large for your paper and it will be cropped. Well, what if you just want to print some 5x7s or 4x6s? If you're using the image resize method to specify your size, you might be losing detail in your prints.
I'm going to show you how you can resize your photos to be a print size (like 5x7") without losing pixels and quality.
To start, here is a humorous photo of my cat Oscar and his little brother Bernard standing on our drier. This photo was taken with a Sony Cyper-shot DSC-P8 3.2 Mega Pixel digital camera. That camera's default resolution at fine quality is 2048 x 1536 pixels at 72 dpi which translates to 28.444 x 21.333" printed.
If I were to change the document size to 5x7" then my pixels are changed to 504 x 360. That is a 82.5% loss in quality.
If I were to print this document, it would look something like this (close-up):
So, what's the trick?
The trick is to up the resolution as you change the Document size to try and match the original pixels of our photo (2048 x 1536). So, If I change the resolution to 300, I get a photo that is 2100 x 1500. I don't recommend using that size because the first value (2100) is larger than our original size (2048) and so Photoshop will be making up pixels. If I use 290 for the resolution, I end up with a photo that is 2030 x 1450 which is just smaller than my original resolution.
Now I have a photo that is actually a 5x7" document with a resolution of 290 pixels. When I print it, it will be a 5x7" photo and will look something like this (close-up):
Taking it further
This tip doesn't just apply to home snap-shots. This technique is important to keep in mind when creating any photos for print, whether for your clients or your own company. Also, keep resolution and physical size in mind when importing vector Illustrator documents or PDFs.
Comments
Since you're trying to think of resolutions that don't involve upsizing, and little downsizing, it looks to me that you're ideally looking for no resizing.
I think the best trick here is clicking off the "Resample Image" checkbox. Now Photoshop will not reize the image at all. It will merely adjust the ratio of pixels per inch in the file. 200 - 300 ppi is ideal for printed photos, so simply pick the inches dimension you desire.
I believe a default of 72 ppi is geared towards online viewing. One might suggest that the camera manufacturer should choose 200 ppi as the default resolution for their photos, considering today's higher resolutions.
By David Hoffman
Posted on Dec 3, 2007
David,
Excellent contribution!
I had never played with the "Resample Image" checkbox. That definitely takes the math/guess-work out of it.
Thanks,
Donovan
By Donovan Myers
Posted on Dec 3, 2007