Size and Quality

vandecarr · Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 9:40 pm Post subject: Size and Quality

I hope someone here can answer this question because it's making me crazy.

First when I talk about printing I DO NOT print on my home printer rather I send photos to a photo studio (digitally, of course).

So here os the question:

When I take photographs of people, full body shot or close up portrait, I always shoot in RAW.

When I transfer these photos from my camera to my computer and open them in photoshop they are large files but at 72 ppi.

What I do is change these to 300 ppi 8x10 and jpeg because I have to send it via internet and that is whats required (using image size). When I do this it looks good on the computer but lacks quality when printed however, it does look good if I print it as a 5x7 or smaller.

How can I keep these photos at a high quality when printed?

I'm looking forward to hearing from you very soon now.

Thanks,
Mike

crazylarson · Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 10:35 pm Post subject:

Well there can be many different problems here.

I think that you might need a better printer but I don't really think you want to go out to Staples and buy a new printer. You could if you wanted to but there are easier ways.

Are you using photo paper? I have a box of some right here. It works great for me. It's called Premium HP Photo Paper by hp invent.

Also, you can try digitally enhancing your pictures via computer. You can do this very easily with Adobe Photoshop CS2. Another program you can use usually comes with the camera itself. It probably came with the camera as you bought it. I know for a fact that all Kodak digital camera's come with Kodak Easyshare and you can change the printing quality and image quality on the computer.

I hope this helped out. Update me on this issue.

Thanks:)

swanseamale47 · Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2006 2:06 am Post subject:

I don't know what camera/printer you are using but any of the newer cameras over 4MP should give a really good 10x8, I can get a pretty good A4 (12x8 roughly) from a 2MP cell phone camera.
As for the 6MP+ slr cameras you should be looking at 36x24 inch prints from these in good quality.
If your using PS camera raw theres a resolution box on the bottom, have you tried changing that? Also what method are you using to resize, are you using bicubic or something else?
I'm guessing it's the printing, try saving one to a cd or pen drive or something and take it in to a good photo store and get one printed there for comparrison. Wayne

vandecarr · Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:01 am Post subject:

My camera is a Fugi S5100 4.6 megapixel. Prints are done at a professional photo developing studio.

The pictures look grainy and unsharp mask doesn't really help. I've been duplicating the image and adding a bit of glaussian blur, reducing the opacity and merging the layers together.

this helps but it is not a crisp professional looking photo and that is what I need.

Thanks,
Mike

swanseamale47 · Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:09 pm Post subject:

Grainy? are you shooting at a high ISO by any chance? compare your shots with these and see how they look. Wayne

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2004_reviews/fuji_s5100_samples.html

AgfaD2 · Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:23 pm Post subject:

What bit are you saving your files in? Do you know the digital printer that is printing these for you? I work in a digital art studio on high end equipment and might be a help to you. Is it an inkjet print they are printing on? or RA-4?

vandecarr · Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:05 pm Post subject:

swanseamale47 thanks. those pics are really great I will have to look back over my manual with the camera.

Should I be shooting at a high ISO?

Thanks,
Mike

swanseamale47 · Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:23 am Post subject:

Shoot at the lowest ISO you can and still get a decent shutter speed, the higher the speed the grainier the pic, try shooting a static subject at 100 iso in good light (ideally with the camera on a tripod) the quality "should" be really good, then for comparrison try the same shot at 400 or 800, you will be supprised by the difference. Wayne

derekf · Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:42 am Post subject:

Hi,

I think that your problems do not lie with any sort of printer, but rather with the JPEG compression that you are using when saving the files to transfer via the Internet.

When you say that the images look better when printed at a smaller size, this makes perfect sense, as now you cannot see, to the same extent, the damage that the JPEG algorithm is doing to your images.

If it is imperative that you use JPEG compression, use the highest quality (lowest compression) option.

If you are not restricted to only JPEG as a compression format, try LZW, or even perhaps save the images as Photoshop PDFs (without compression).

Hope this helps.

vandecarr · Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 1:39 pm Post subject:

i got the problem fixed. thanks for all your ideas. my wife changed some settings on my camera and once i reset them it all worked great.

Thanks,
mike

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