Printing large digital photos the right way

Want to print your digital photos as large as you can? Follow these steps to ensure the highest quality.

So you want to print the digital photos you took with your camera, and you want to print them nice and large. Heck, maybe you want to blow them up and turn a blank wall into a mini gallery. Before you start printing, you need to make sure your images are suitable. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Just because an image looks sufficiently big onscreen doesn’t mean it’ll translate the same way on paper. A 2-megapixel-resolution image, for example, will only go as large as 4 x 6 while keeping the best quality intact, even though that image might look great on your monitor. If you try to print an image larger than allowed, you’ll get something that’s pixelated and unusable.

It’s easy to determine the number of megapixels of an image and how large you can print it. First, find the dimensions of the image. You can find that through a program like Adobe Photoshop or the properties menu of the image file. Next, multiply the height and width, and you’ll have the answer. For example, an image that measures 4608 x 3456 equals 15,925,248 (in pixels), which is roughly 16 megapixels (one megapixel equals one million pixels).

Now, to figure out the print size, divide the width and height dimensions by 300. Why 300? That’s the number of pixels per inch (ppi) (also a type of resolution) that’s suitable for high-quality printing. From our last example, a 4608 x 3456 image will yield a 15 x 11 print. A 640 x 480 image then, well, you can forget about printing it larger than 2 x 1 inches.

Some places may refer to ppi as dots per inch (dpi). Although they are technically different, many places use them interchangeably. It’s a confusing topic, but just remember to keep it at 300 where you see dpi or ppi; if your image has a 72 dpi resolution, you will need to increase it with photo editing software (make sure you deselect the “resample image” box). If your software doesn’t offer such fine-tuning (some just offer “best” or “normal” as options), just remember the math we mentioned and you’ll know how large you are supposed to go.

If you are willing to sacrifice a bit of quality in order to gain a larger print size, you could cheat and lower the resolution, but check the final print quality to see if it’s to your liking. The lower the resolution, the larger the print size, but quality suffers.

So, you can see why megapixels matter. Simply put, the larger the megapixel, the larger you can print your images.

You can set your digital camera to record in various sizes from large to small, or high to low. Some will even shoot high quality, uncompressed RAW images (versus the standard compressed JPEG). Saving your photos as small as possible takes up less room on a memory card, but with high-capacity memory cards available for cheap, why would you? Use all the megapixels your digital camera can muster. As we just mentioned, the more megapixels in an image, the higher the resolution, the better the photo will look.

Photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop let you resize an image. It’s fine to make a photo smaller, but you should never use this feature to make a photo larger. Doing so will only turn your photo into something heavily pixelated.

There is software, however, that’s specially designed for photo enlargement purposes. One is SmillaEnlarger, an open-source application that’s available for free. It has many happy users, so give it a shot. It won’t cost you anything to experiment.

If you have a flatbed scanner or if there’s one built into your multifunction printer, you could enlarge an image by scanning it. This is ideal for enlarging old photographs or digital images that are too low-res. Before you begin the scan process, adjust your settings to scan at 600 dpi and save it as a less-compressed TIFF file (versus JPEG). You now have a higher-resolution image that you can print larger than the original.

If you are enlarging a digital image, print it out first at the highest resolution and at the maximum size (see above) on good quality paper, and then scan it.

Okay, this might be the lazy way to enlarge a photo, but it’s convenient and practical, especially if you don’t have the equipment to do it at home. Plus, it’s handy if you want to print a photo larger than what your home printer can output (large-format like a poster or canvas print, for example). Whether it’s your local Costco, Walgreens, or FedEx Office, or an online service like Shutterfly or Snapfish, you should make sure the image file you’re give them is at the highest quality.

Share your photo printing tips in the comments.

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iMore Weekly Contest winners: iPods and Instagram photos!

iMore Weekly Contest winners: iPods and Instagram photos! | iMore.com Skip to main content Android BlackBerry iPhone / iPad Windows Phone webOS REGISTER|LOG IN iMore iPhone iPad Forums Apps Accessories Reviews How-To Podcasts Free wallpapers: iPhone & iPad Guides: iOS, iCloud, Siri, photography, jailbreak Free: iPhone apps & games, iPad apps & games Shop Online Cases Chargers Screen protectors Headsets & More Free shipping on orders over $50 iMore Weekly Contest winners: iPods and Instagram photos! By Michelle Haag, Wednesday, Oct 24, 2012 a 2:37 am 7

If there's one thing iMore loves even more than iPhones and iPads (and iPods!), it's giving cool iPhone and iPad accessories and apps to our awesome readers. This week we have...

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Runner-up - Joebin! (Instagram link)

 

Congratulations everyone! Winners will be contacted in the next few days with information on claiming their prizes. Be sure to check out all the entries in the Instagram Contest over in the forums as there were a lot of awesome photos.

Looking for another chance to win? We always have a contest underway for something cool, so keep your eyes on the blogs for those announcements. Right now you can enter to win a free iPad mini, or try your photography skills and enter this week's photo contest! Details can be found at the links below.

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More of: Contest Winners ? PreviouslySonic Jump by SEGA for iPhone and iPad review Next up ?Weekly Photo Contest: Lens Flare! There are 7 comments. Add yours. Joebin says: Oct 24, 2012 at 3:10 am - 1 day ago

Thanks for organizing weekly contests! Congrats @jamesdaly ! I appreciate being mentioned with the cool iPhoneographers here at iMore. Now doesn't the runner up win the new iPad mini? LOL!

Reply Leanna Lofte says: Oct 24, 2012 at 3:21 am - 1 day ago

:)

Reply Leanna Lofte says: Oct 24, 2012 at 3:21 am - 1 day ago

Congrats everyone!

Reply ARLENwo says: Oct 24, 2012 at 5:28 am - 1 day ago

I just got paid $6784 working off my laptop this month. And if you think that's cool, my divorced friend has twin toddlers and made over $9k her first month. It feels so good making so much money when other people have to work for so much less. This is what I do, zoo33.com

Reply DayAnStef says: Oct 24, 2012 at 9:16 am - 1 day ago

Congrats to the winners!

Reply rosie0730 says: Oct 24, 2012 at 11:37 am - 1 day ago

Congrats to the winners!

Reply jamesdaly says: Oct 24, 2012 at 8:28 pm - 15 hours ago

Woah iMore you guys are the best! Thanks so much :) congrats to all the winners, and I'm stoked you guys liked the photo :)

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