I am sure there was a post about this sometime ago..
But I am too lazy to look. ;D
Usually I resize all of my pictures to 600 x 450 - because Photoshop and picnik, are EXTREMELY slow when a picture is larger than that (for me)
But now.. what if I want to print my pictures?
As in like, frame them and stuff.
Should I resize them and enlarge them or what?
Or thee's no hope, so I should keep them to myself?
I use Paint Shop Pro X2....if I reduce the size, the program preserves the original if I want to print an 8x10 or larger. Once I reduce a picture, I usually can't enlarge it again ! I loose too much resolution when it's reduced....so I go back to the preserved original !! I always make sure I have a copy of the original !
I always keep the original just in case i want to do something different with it later. If you don't have the original they do have some nice enlargement plugin and stand alone programs. 600x450 would be good for a 4x6 maybe i don't know.
@sickboi@nyweb I usually keep the originals, but usually the originals aren't edited.. So I'd have to edit them all over again.. which is kind of hard, because once i edit a photo, i can't edit it again..
Save the original. Once you make it into a smaller file, it is hard to enlarge it again because you are trying to add back in information that doesn't exist anymore.
@nyweb I use Paint Shop Pro myself. I keep a backup of the original on a separate drive and when I edit with PSP a copy is keep. My rule is to never edit the original file.
@cirasj ...yeah...PSP keeps a copy of the original, I use "SAVE AS", plus I preserve the original RAW ! A lot more work, but a lot of the shots were a lot of work too !!
Yes after you edit like you want make another copy. I'm learning all this myself too. I always have the original. I need to get a program to make them smaller to unload on flicker. My originals take up to much space on there, so I'm told to make an extra copy of the original to use for printing in the future. Do you do the www.dailyshoot.com It's really fun. It gives you a challenge everyday. Check it out it you want. :-)
@daliadestructo I do all my editing in Photoshop, and when i am done editing, i save it as a photoshop file. THEN i reduce it, do a 'save as' as a jpg, then close the photoshop file without re-saving so it's saved in photoshop still at the larger size.
* Oh, i see that you need to reduce them to be able to work on them in photoshop.
Don't know what you can do there. *new computer maybe*
For a bit more technicals: images on the web are typically at a resolution of 72ppi - 72 pixels per inch. This is approximately the same pixel density as monitors and such, so images contain only as much information as is needed to display them - as many dots as your monitor physically has (notable exception being the iPhone4 which has about the same resolution as print).
The print industry however works off a resolution of 300dpi - 300 dots per inch. So a 600px wide image which looks about 8 inches wide on your monitor, would normally (at proper print quality) come out at 2 inches wide when printed. If you tried to print it any bigger it'd look washed out and blurry and a bit lame.
As has been said, you can't resize up, so the only solution is working with the larger images in the first place, I'm afraid.
I expect you'd get mixed results, but you could try upsizing using Photoshop, making sure to use bicubic resampling, in increments of 10%. The +10%, +10%, +10% method does give slightly better results than just upsizing in one go, and might give you a result good enough to print at 6x4. It won't look anywhere near as good as if you had the original resolution or 1800x1200 pixels, but it mightn't look too bad. People print from Facebook quality photos (before Facebook added hi-res) and get resonable results, and those images are only 720 pixels on the long edge, so it is possible. Just don't expect the usual clarity and sharpness you get from 6x4 prints.
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* Oh, i see that you need to reduce them to be able to work on them in photoshop.
Don't know what you can do there. *new computer maybe*
The print industry however works off a resolution of 300dpi - 300 dots per inch. So a 600px wide image which looks about 8 inches wide on your monitor, would normally (at proper print quality) come out at 2 inches wide when printed. If you tried to print it any bigger it'd look washed out and blurry and a bit lame.
As has been said, you can't resize up, so the only solution is working with the larger images in the first place, I'm afraid.