Everyone knows that resizing digital photos to smaller sizes generally does not create quality problems. On the other hand, increasing the size of an image is where all the problems start. Photos tend to become blurry, soft, and pixelated.
Here’s trick originated by Jim DiVitale that he swears will let you increase your digital camera images up to poster size with hardly any loss of quality.
Once your photo is at a size that you like use your printers tile feature to break your photo into a lot of smaller photos. Glue and mount each one to a piece of foam core art board and assemble the entire piece into a wall display.
We have not created one but we’ve seen them and they are VERY cool!
Here are several examples of digital images that have been sectioned.
[Source]
Generally speaking, shrinking the physical dimensions of a photo does not create a quality problem – you can make an 8×10″ into a 4×5″ with little visible loss of quality. It’s increasing the size of an image where you run into problems (the photo often gets visibly blurry, softer, and even pixelated). However, digital photography guru (and Photoshop User columnist) Jim DiVitale showed me a trick he swears by that lets you increase your digital camera images up to full poster size, with hardly any visible loss of quality to the naked eye, and I tell ya, it’ll make a believer out of you.
Step One
Open the digital camera image you want to increase to poster size, even if its resolution is set at 72 ppi.
Step Two
Go under the Image menu, under Resize, and choose Image Size. When the Image Size dialog appears, make sure Resample Image is turned on. Switch the unit of measure pop-up menus in the dialog from Inches to Percent and type in 110 in both the Width and Height fields, which will increase your image by 10%. Believe it or not, when you increase in 10% increments, for some reason it doesn’t seem to soften (blur) the image. It’s freaky, I know, but to believe it, you just have to try it yourself.
Step Three
To get this image up to poster size, it’s going to take quite a few passes with this “increase-by-10%” technique, so make sure you’ve got a comfy chair before you start. But if you need to make your prints big, and keep as much clarity and definition as possible, it’s worth the extra effort.
Look at the final image onscreen and show the rulers by pressing Control-R. The loss of quality is almost negligible, yet the image is almost the size of a standard, full-size poster. I had to increase the size by 10% about 12 times to get it up in size.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
your increasing image size tutorial is very nice. thank you. I was trying to find such a tutorial in the net,because I am a retd. person and want to make some money through stock agencies. They ask for big size images. My images are hardly one or two MBs.I use a Canon A80 (4mp)and Canon A720 IS(8mp).I am not good at Photoshop too. Pl. advice, if I deserve
than you
Happy Easter
AntonyMadhu
India
16-3-08