Hi-res wedding photos?

[kh_42]

Hey guys,

This is probably a daft question, but I'd like to get a couple of opinions on something before I take any kind of action.


1f you had paid, say, £250 for a copy of the High-Res images (and hence the copyright) of your wedding photos how would you expect that to look? For example, if you viewed the images and found that they ranged in size from 1MB - 6MB, would you be happy that you had high-res images?

I wanted to get some thoughts before I go back to the photographer - would these be considered high-res commercially? Is my feeling that these images are not high-res and hence I've been done being coloured by my knowledge of photography?

Thoughts and opinions greatly welcomed!

 

[tiler65]

The colour information boosts the mb range so if you have a lot of B&W then the files will be less in size. Also, these sizes could be the compressed jpg size which will not reflect on the hi-re of the image at all.

An uncompressed 48mb colour file can be compressed down to a 5-7mb jpg so I would not worry if I were you.

 

[Mark G]

Have a look at the image size, what is it?

 

[markmullen]

Just as a pointer, the likelihood is you haven't bought the copyright, just a licence to use.

As for high res, if they're 6Mb jpegs they're likely plenty big enough to print at normal sizes, you couldn't do a bus shelter with them but I doubt that's your intention.

 

[micloi]

Also do not forget that some could be crops. The photographer could have up sized them to keep the file size high if they wanted to cheat but it does not look like they are doing anything of the sort.

If the photos look nice I would not worry about the file size too much.

 

[kh_42]

Fair points so far - I just clarified and I have bought the right to reproduce, rather than copyright, so that's a good spot!

My issue is that I don't just want to print at normal sizes, there are fair few that we want to enlarge quite a bit and I'm concerned that they won't look as good as they ought to. I know that the jpeg is a compresses file, but I was of the belief that the quality of the image suffers during the compression process.

Again, happy to be corrected if I've misunderstood anything.

 

[markmullen]

How big are you talking?

If you look at the image what dimensions is it (in pixels)?

 

[Yv]

define 'enlarge quite a bit'?

I ask for several reasons, firstly I know a member round here that printed a picture, 800px's on longest side and at 72dpi at A4 - yes, it wasn't perfect, but at normal viewing distance it looked acceptable to the normal person. The point is that the bigger the picture, as a general rule, the further away it will be viewed from so any issues close up will be far less of a problem when viewed normally.

A 1MB file is, as said earlier, unlikely to fill a bus stop, but there is more to it than that, things like compression, data and dpi [for printing purposes] etc. As Mark said, check the actual image size and see what you really have, and perhaps even get a single test print done at a large size if you are concerned, plenty of online printers do quite cheap large prints that you could use.

 

[Phil V]

Without knowing the camera used I'd guess they're the full res JPEGs. As others have said, JPEGs change in size depending on the subject.

You need to look at the image size in pixels, then we'll tell you estimated max print sizes.