I don’t know anything about photo shop, cameras, that stuff in general.
So I’m trying to make one of those three piece canvas photos from shutterfly.
Here is the photo:
So the resolution is 1900x1200
I wanted to make a center of 20x30" and two outer edges of 16x20", I went to go upload it and shutterfly said the resolution was too low and the quality would be poor. So I googled how to increase resolution and I found it on paint.
I easily jacked it up 3x the original amount and on my computer it looks fine. I uploaded the new image to shutterfly and it said it was good to go.
My concern is that when I get the photos it’s gonna look like shit. Can MS paint really turn up the resolution with the click of a mouse? How does it just add pixels, etc.
I honestly don’t know, but I would say from experience…no. Think about as a kid, pressing silly putty on a newspaper. When you stretch it out, it becomes blurry. You can certainly subtract size but you can’t really add to it.
You can’t fabricate a higher resolution and expect to retain quality. You either took pics at the required rez to get your desired print size or you print a small (or blurry) image.
So basically if the original resolution of a picture you like isn’t enough to get the picture to the size you want there’s no possible way to ever make a picture bigger?
It’s possible but it ain’t going to be pretty. If I only have enough paint for a 5x5 square and I need to paint a 10x10 square…it probably isn’t going to look that good. If I need to paint a 3x3 square however, I’m ok.
you can make any image bigger, but as you do the quality quickly decreases because the printer has to invent information using math to fill in what doesn’t exist.
depending on the content and how picky you are it may or may not be an issue at the end. I suspect letting the printer pre-press people do what they think is best and not trying to trick the system by just doubling the size.
For a complex low detail photo like this one I think you’ll be fine. If it was a photo of a baby or something it would be horrible.
Well when I think of increasing the size I figured a computer would just make an intelligent estimate not just botch it the fuck up. I’m going to make a big ass print cause it’s like 10$, if it comes out shitty oh well.
They do have the capability, and they do do that but it’s not the same as taking the initial pic in hi-res. They’re just guessing where to add new information in the pic and it ends up in blocky/blurry photos that look terrible up close. The farther away you get the less you notice.
you have to think about this the same way as when you watch a movie and the security camera zooms in a million times over and somehow doesn’t lose any quality. we all know that’s impossible and you can’t “enhance” to make it look good again. This is the exact same thing.
my job at Xerox (production color analyst / remote solutions engineer) is basically to work between designers and operators of production level digital print presses to get the best consistent results.
That chart does explain things much easier. That’s why I found it so strange I could just take that 1900x1200 photo in paint and alter it to 3800x1875 for a 20 to 30", it didn’t seem logical for it to be that easy. I’ll mess around a bit see how it goes.
EDIT: I was using Walmart’s photo editor, and you can clearly see how shitty the photos come out.
you are better off just giving them the best version of the photo without messing with it unless you’re a graphic designer. Let the software that their server runs upscale it as it will likely do the best job for whatever they are printing with.
That’s my plan. Thanks for the help fellas. Of course if there’s someone on here who can work some magic, I’m willing to pay to see what you can come up with.
