My sister emailed me (Gmail) ancient family photo. I'd like to make it bigger - my printout clicking on the DLed photo yields a picture about half an 8 x 11 printer page. Anyone know a simple way to make the print larger? Hints? Suggestions? I'm unfamiliar with working with (photoshopping) pictures.
TIA
If you try to make a photo larger, it will usually pixelate/distort which looks bad. You might be able to increase the saturation, or save as a .bmp which has more picture detail, and then increase the size a little bit, but it depends on the original format of the photo.
Old school methods are to make a copy negative of the original photo using a larger format than the original, then you can print the original as a larger photo without obvious distortions.
I have just spent three full months scanning my negatives because at the age of 66 I have finally been recognized as a photographer and now have a fine arts dealer to represent me.
In short, all you have to do is resize the photo to 8 x 11
Note: Although any photo software can do that, unless you use a good program such as Photoshop *which can re-sample the image* you will lose information when the size is increased and you will have a poor print.
A good simple and easy to use program is iRfanview.
Even though it's free, it's very good and I sent the guy a contribution
Here are instructions
Here is where you can get IRfanview
Note: Before you begin, have the person email you a decent sized jpeg if they have not already done so.
If it's a 75k file for example, there will just plain not be enough info to work with...you'd want a file size to begin with of at least 1 meg or so
You have to use photo shop kind software to do what you want. It can be done. There are many usable freeware photo editing software. Usually new digital camera when you bought includes such stuffs. Final result is also depends on max resolution of your printer. I use Canon photo printer for pictures. Every thing else is by color laser multi-function printer.
Making a small image larger will rarely produce a quality image. OTOH, resizing will work if you have a large image and want to make it smaller.
If you only have a smaller version of an image to print, print that image, take a photo of it making sure the dimension settings are larger, and the copy "negative" of the smaller image will usually print larger photos and maintain the image quality.
Another reply suggested the freeware Irfanview -
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| My sister emailed me (Gmail) ancient family photo. I'd like to make it | bigger - my printout clicking on the DLed photo yields a picture about half | an 8 x 11 printer page. Anyone know a simple way to make the print larger? | Hints? Suggestions? I'm unfamiliar with working with (photoshopping) | pictures.
You mean that she emailed a JPG file and you want to print it on paper? Download the free IrfanView. Open the image in it. Go to File -> Print. It will provide various options.
IrfanView is a beautifully made program that';s very compact. It's like the poor man's Photoshop, capable of numerous functions like resize, brighten, contrast, etc.
If you want to resize the digital image you should convert to BMP file first. IrfanView can also do that. JPG format is "lossy". Every time you save it, the image is compressed by dropping out data. Even if you don't specifically compress it further, merely saving as JPG will lose data. To avoid that, work in BMP and only save as JPG if you need to email the photo or use it online.
Note that there are limits to what you can do with an image. And a lot of it depends on the quality and size of the image as you received it. Printing is typically 300 dots per inch. If you have an image 600w x 300h on your computer screen it's probably less than 100 dpi, so it may display
6-8" wide. But if you print that image it will come out 2" x 1". (600 x 300 \ 300dpi) If you wanted to print it, say, 6" x 3" you could do that with IrfanView, but the quality would be very poor.If you have an image in the range of 2400 x
3300 pixels you can probably print that 8x11", but even then it will depend on the quality of the image. Have you noticed that some photos have tiny rectangles or squares visible in the image? Those are known as artifacts. It's the result of excessive compression of the image. Once that kind of damage is done there's no way to recapture the image data that was lost.On 01/28/2016 11:38 AM, Muggles wrote: X
Photoshop and IRFanview are very good at interpolation. I have gotten great quality prints by simply re-sampling. There is of course a limit. That's why I told the OP that if the file size he's working with is 75k for example...then forget it.
With a 1 meg jpg, there is probably enough information there to re-sample
That would work but assumes the OP has the equipment and know-how to do so.
>
You can copy and paste the image into something like MS Word or Open Office and easily enlarge it by clicking it on and dragging the corner to fit the page. You might want to rotate it to print in landscape mode.
All great advice.
Though there are lossless jpg editors it is a good idea to convert to an uncompressed format prior to editing. Though there is nothing wrong with BMP, today's standard is TIFF.
Quoting Edward Ingold: TIFF files contain tags with additional information, like color space, resolution and print size, and can have 16-bit/channel depth (BMP's are limited to 8 bit).
He did say the image was about 4"x 5". It depends on the compression the image he was sent was saved to - it could be made a little larger.
It depends on how large he wants the final print to be and how much blur and distortion he's willing to overlook even with a 1mb file.
He said he's not familiar with working with Photoshop, so he could play with irfanview and learn the tool steps, or ask someone who knows how to do it to help out, or see if the person who sent it has an original that's larger. Often times uploaded pics are sized down before upload because of server limitations on uploads. The photo owner probably has an original that's already larger.
Another + for tiff files is you can preserve layers is you're working with a composite.
I just tried an experiment with one of the first digital images I ever took back in 2000 when I had a 1 MP camera
Off the camera the image was 300k 5 x 7" @ 192 dpi
I used Photoshop to re-sample to 8 x 11" @ 300 dpi
It looked very good and I could notice no pixillation, it would have made a pretty decent print
It is possible to repair or restore pixels in an image by blowing it up and cloning individual pixels that resemble the area and coloration. It doesn't recapture the original image data, but it works to make an image more usable.
By now OP is totally confused.
On Thu, 28 Jan 2016 11:08:55 -0600, philo wrote in
+1 on that.
I could get similar results with many of my photos, but they were larger files, so had to hunt for a smaller one that was compressed down to 30kb (5"x6")and tried to resample to 8 x 11" and it was pretty bad out of focus and pixelated.
On 01/28/2016 12:52 PM, Muggles wrote: X
yep , that's why I said not to even bother with anything under 75k
The 300k jpg off my 1 mp camera is probably near the lower limit of usability
yeah, or downloading irfanview and trying to make the image larger via the instructions link someone posted.
If I were him I'd ask the image own if they had a larger file of the image he could print out. :)
I agree.
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