enlarging

[justjan]

hi folks

i'm new to serious photography.

can anyone tell me if its possible to make smaller photo's larger without them becoming pixelated and blurry? i have photoshop elements 9, and lightroom 3.

my children send me excellent pictures from their mobile phone's, and facebook, i would like to enlarge some to put up on my walls.

from jan

 

[Scarecrow]

Most images can be made bigger to a certain extent before they become a pixelated mess.

How much they can be expanded largely depends on the quality and size of the original image. Despite a lot of camera phones now boasting 8 mega pixels or more, they use a very, very small sensor, and unless the picture is correctly focussed and exposed, any enlargement will only exacerbate any faults inherent in the original.

 

[john-oh]

i'm new to serious photography.

I don't know what you are doing here then, it's more knock about here

Answer mainly covered above, you can only use trial and error, plus stand further back when viewing . Also try to use full frame (don't crop)

Other methods might include using Qimage or Genuine Fractals, but these are a significant purchase.

 

[Harvey_nikon]

It really depends what quality you are after, however, if you want them really big I would say you should rasterbate them:

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

I've used this before and got a decent 2m x 1.5m sized print on A4 sheets from a crappy 1.5mp webcam. It was my brother wearing a saucepan on his head and pulling a stupid face I stole when fixing his PC, went on the local roundabout for his 21st

 

[justjan]

thankyou very much for that information. i will try it.

i really wanted to know how to enlarge say 5 to 10 kb images to a4 size paper for printing and framing?

from jan

It really depends what quality you are after, however, if you want them really big I would say you should rasterbate them:

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

I've used this before and got a decent 2m x 1.5m sized print on A4 sheets from a crappy 1.5mp webcam. It was my brother wearing a saucepan on his head and pulling a stupid face I stole when fixing his PC, went on the local roundabout for his 21st