Resizing for Print

[Pippy_Neville]

I'm about to send a whole bunch of images to Photobox (hope they're as good as I've read on here) that people have ordered from an event I covered on Friday. I've resized (ctrl-alt-i) or used crop to make them the size of the print that I want, which is mostly a 9x6, although there is one I'm worried about which is a heavily cropped image that's gotta be 15x10 print.

My question is: what is the best way to do this? I suppose an additional question would be is it necessary or have I wasted my time? Some of them are crops though, so what other way of cropping can I use?

In short, if a client orders a certain size print, what workflow would you use for a cropped and an uncropped image? Any particular book or article you could point me towards or any help in general would be fantastic!

Had a quick look on here but can't find the answer, so apologies if this has been covered before.

Thanks,
Pip

 

[admirable]

15x10 is a 3x2 format so should not need any resize if taken with your 400D.

 

[admirable]

I'm presuming here that you have cropped this image in 3x2 format already?

 

[Pippy_Neville]

15x10 is a 3x2 format so should not need any resize if taken with your 400D.

Yes, I had a thought today that I'd wasted my time resizing the uncropped shots. I assumed it had to be the right size for sharpening? But I'm probably wrong...

I'm presuming here that you have cropped this image in 3x2 format already?

... the cropped ones were cropped to a 3x2 format in all cases as I offer 9x6, 12x8 & 15x10. When entering the crop size I also put in 240 pixels per inch resolution as that was what the original images were. I'm getting a bit better at pping but I'm struggling to get my head around the very simple size v pixel count thing... if I put in I want 9"x6" at 240 then a 100% view is about twice the correct size?

 

[admirable]

Forget about the ppi, just do what your doing and crop 3x2 format, you'll be fine.

Re sharpening, it is easier to see the shapening effect if you zoom in but I don't think it has to be the 'right' size.

 

[Pippy_Neville]

Forget about the ppi, just do what your doing and crop 3x2 format, you'll be fine.

Re sharpening, it is easier to see the shapening effect if you zoom in but I don't think it has to be the 'right' size.

Thanks admirable. I'm gonna have a read up on this too, see if I can finally get my swede round it.

 

[Craikeybaby]

I'm sure I posted something along these lines nt to long ago, but here we go:

I'm assuming you are starting with your master image, that you have already done exposure/WB corrections and any compositional cropping etc.

Crop to the aspect ratio of the print you want (15x10, 7x5 etc)
Resize the image to the size you want printed at the DPI the printer specifies (we use 360dpi, but you should check with Photobox), if you are using Photoshop use the Bicubic smoother option if you need to make the image much bigger.

The workflow is exactly the same regardless of if the master image has been cropped, other than that if it has you will need to "make" more pixels.

 

[MisterE]

I'm writing this assuming that you haven't uploaded any to Photobox yet. When you do so and start the process to select your print sizes you get two options. Shrink to fit or crop to fit. The tiny little thumbnails on their pages make it very difficult to see if the picture is filling the frame without any narrow white border in the shrink to fit case, or in the crop to fit case, how much you have lost, if anything.

For one that has to be 15x10, then I would suggest that you make it a crop to fit so that it will fill a 15x10 paper. But you have to make sure that nothing is so close to the edges that any slight crop (and it will be only slight, if any) will not lose anything important. If you make it a shrink to fit then there's a chance that you may have a small white border somewhere that you would have to trim off.

 

[Pippy_Neville]

I'm sure I posted something along these lines nt to long ago, but here we go:

I'm assuming you are starting with your master image, that you have already done exposure/WB corrections and any compositional cropping etc.

Crop to the aspect ratio of the print you want (15x10, 7x5 etc)
Resize the image to the size you want printed at the DPI the printer specifies (we use 360dpi, but you should check with Photobox), if you are using Photoshop use the Bicubic smoother option if you need to make the image much bigger.

The workflow is exactly the same regardless of if the master image has been cropped, other than that if it has you will need to "make" more pixels.

Thanks Craikey, that's very helpful.

I'm writing this assuming that you haven't uploaded any to Photobox yet. When you do so and start the process to select your print sizes you get two options. Shrink to fit or crop to fit. The tiny little thumbnails on their pages make it very difficult to see if the picture is filling the frame without any narrow white border in the shrink to fit case, or in the crop to fit case, how much you have lost, if anything.

For one that has to be 15x10, then I would suggest that you make it a crop to fit so that it will fill a 15x10 paper. But you have to make sure that nothing is so close to the edges that any slight crop (and it will be only slight, if any) will not lose anything important. If you make it a shrink to fit then there's a chance that you may have a small white border somewhere that you would have to trim off.

Cheers MisterE, good advice. Already sent them off though. I noticed the little box on the tiny thumbnail. I'd already adjusted sizes of all of them so I think blue boxes fitted well. I'll find out when they arrive, hopefully tomorrow!

 

[pete.rush]

Personally, when I send them to photobox for printing, I keep the images as large as possible, they have a size guide on their website for the minimum pixels wide by minimum pixels length for each of the different print sizes and when you upload the images and buy a print, they also let up the quality of the print. A 3000 x 2000 pixel image will print easily to A2 I've found.

quality advice
http://www.photobox.co.uk/content/quality-advice
resolution guide
http://www.photobox.co.uk/content/quality-advice/resolutionguide

Peter

 

[Pippy_Neville]

Personally, when I send them to photobox for printing, I keep the images as large as possible, they have a size guide on their website for the minimum pixels wide by minimum pixels length for each of the different print sizes and when you upload the images and buy a print, they also let up the quality of the print. A 3000 x 2000 pixel image will print easily to A2 I've found.

quality advice
http://www.photobox.co.uk/content/quality-advice
resolution guide
http://www.photobox.co.uk/content/quality-advice/resolutionguide

Peter

Cheers Pete. I'd been looking for something like that on their site, sometimes can't see for looking! Very useful.

 

[pete.rush]

Cheers Pete. I'd been looking for something like that on their site, sometimes can't see for looking! Very useful.

No problem, I've had no real problems with photobox, been pleased with the images they've printed for me over the years, one word of warning though, they offer a retouch and edit service on images, personally from my own experience a complete waste of money and I would avoid using it.

Peter