what do you do with the pictures

J

jessica31876

New member
What do you do with pictures taken on older digital cameras (like 1 or 2 megapixels)? I got my first digital when the midange ones were around 1 or 2 megapixels. Veryyyy old now LOL. Well I have a ton of photos from that time and they just are soooo small that when pasted onto a layout they are only about 1 inch. Id like to do some layouts with them but Im not really sure what to do with them. If I changed the resolution of the layout how far would it be safe to go for printing them? I know of a shop that sells all their products at 200 DPI so is 200 that much different then 300 for those older photos?
 
You're going to lose quite a bit of quality if you enlarge them, no matter which resolution you use. That's just my experience, somebody else might have something better to add :)

Oh, I should add, I had a nice 180 dpi photo that I enlarged to 300 dpi and it was un-usable... so I dunno what would be "safe". Kwim? Meh, I babble
 
I dont want to enlarge the photos I am talking about changing the resolution of the layout from 300PPI to 200. Ive already tried enlarging the photos and to a certain point it looks ok but I cant do it enough to make it large enough for a layout
AnnieBananie said:
You're going to lose quite a bit of quality if you enlarge them, no matter which resolution you use. That's just my experience, somebody else might have something better to add :)
Click to expand...
 
I scale my pages back to 200dpi so my older photos will fit better. I just assemble the whole page at 300, drop the tiny photo in for positioning, then resize the whole thing to 200 and repaste in the original photo which now fits much better. I have never noticed a quality difference in printing at 12x12 with 200 or 300dpi and I've been printing at both for 3 years now.
 
jessica31876 said:
I dont want to enlarge the photos I am talking about changing the resolution of the layout from 300PPI to 200. Ive already tried enlarging the photos and to a certain point it looks ok but I cant do it enough to make it large enough for a layout
Click to expand...
Ohhhh gotcha gotcha... me read good. LOL
 
That is what I was thinking too. It doesnt show any noticeable differences in the quality when downsizing the elements/papers either?
Stacey42 said:
I scale my pages back to 200dpi so my older photos will fit better. I just assemble the whole page at 300, drop the tiny photo in for positioning, then resize the whole thing to 200 and repaste in the original photo which now fits much better. I have never noticed a quality difference in printing at 12x12 with 200 or 300dpi and I've been printing at both for 3 years now.
Click to expand...
 
I think you should create at 200 dpi, too, to help with the older pictures. I doubt you will be able to see the difference when it's printed.
 
No downsizing doesn't affect the paper or elements. Upsizing does, but I havent noticed any difference when going down in dpi
 
If you are using PS you might consider the 'alien skin' software 'blow up'. It is pricey but if you are going to do a lot of photos, totally worth it (or get really organized and do them all in the 30 day free trail).
I use it constantly and love it!
 
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In a former life at a former site all of our products and layouts were done at 200 dpi. There really isn't a different in the printing. :)
 
wish I did have PS. I use PSP.
girlflies said:
If you are using PS you might consider the 'alien skin' software 'blow up'. It is pricey but if you are going to do a lot of photos, totally worth it (or get really organized and do them all in the 30 day free trail).
I use it constantly and love it!
Click to expand...
 
girlflies said:
If you are using PS you might consider the 'alien skin' software 'blow up'. It is pricey but if you are going to do a lot of photos, totally worth it (or get really organized and do them all in the 30 day free trail).
I use it constantly and love it!
Click to expand...

What is this?

PS - LOVE your avi!!!
 
girlflies said:
If you are using PS you might consider the 'alien skin' software 'blow up'. It is pricey but if you are going to do a lot of photos, totally worth it (or get really organized and do them all in the 30 day free trail).
I use it constantly and love it!
Click to expand...
I just went and got this demo last night to use on some ollllld photos (I blew them up to 4"x6" from liiiike 1" something something), it looked great on screen but they're waiting at Walmart for me to pick them up today so we'll see how she goes! :D SO psyched! Thanks for the tip!
 
I think Paislee Press designs, at OScraps has some templates and quick pages designed for using photos from your cameras (very tiny). Checking out these pages might give you some ideas too on how to work with small photos...
 
How about a combination of 200PPI and 8x8" vs 12x12" so your canvas would be 1600 x 1600 px? Most photos look decent at 180PPI, it's only when they are printed at a large size that they look crappy (in my experience). Also if you decide to do a conservative increase in the photo size, make sure you have your "image resize" set to "bicubic smoother" which is optimal for increasing. Photoshop does have a mechanism for resampling (where it guesses the pixels that will need to fill the space when you enlarge), so the quality you get is dependent on the characteristics of the photo. If you have less variance in colors, etc ... the quality won't be as affected. Also if you use your smart sharpen after you resize, it will improve the photo and B&W conversion may help too. HTH!
 
yes I have noticed B&W helps alot when I have resized photo. I have experiemented a little and it seems like I can increase the size a small amount with no noticeable differences. I use PSP though so I will have to experiment a little to see if they have those other features you mentioned
 
Oh that's why. PSP doesn't resample like PS does. The images don't retain their quality. That is one of the main reasons I converted to PS from PSP, it used to frustrate me to no end! It seems with PSP, even if you downsize you lose quality and the max you can do anything to an image is once before it goes to complete crap. Ugh! You could also try a free trial of PS or PSE and resize your images and see if that helps. Sorry I don't have better advice!
 
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