Printing Help - First Time... Resolution?

Hello,

I'm about to have a couple of photos printed from an online service (Nations Photo to be precise, as I've heard relatively good things about their quality compared to similarly priced sites).

I don't really know a whole lot about resizing for printing. This is the first time I've ever attempted to print my pictures even though I've been photographing for years.

I have an image that I'm going to print in 11x14'. I cropped it to the appropriate ratio and it's 240 DPI but what I'm confused about is, should I resize the image down to the exact document size of 11x14 or leave it where it is? (Currently at 4134 x 3248 which is 13.533 x 17.225 according to Photoshop). I'm just not really sure how print quality works (or printing at all, really). Is it best to print an image larger than its intended document size or resized to be exactly the doc size?

Sorry if any of this sounds idiotic.

Thanks!

I'm not comfortable enough with the process to say for sure what you need to do with a step by step, but I went through this a short time ago. Between tips from the guys here and playing with the Nations site as well as their ROES software, I had success. You can go pretty far in the order process before putting in payment, so try it. If i remember correctly, you will know if your image is too small or too big. You can crop on your own or use Nations tools. I'm not remembering if there was a tool to downsize on Nations or just a crop tool. I think I would go with uploading exactly 11 x 14. But try it, it was fairly friendly once I uploaded pictures to play with.
Here is my thread:
http://nikonites.com/post-processin...ions-how.html?highlight=nations#axzz3k4YI2rNg

algmiyazaki said:

I have an image that I'm going to print in 11x14'. I cropped it to the appropriate ratio and it's 240 DPI but what I'm confused about is, should I resize the image down to the exact document size of 11x14 or leave it where it is? (Currently at 4134 x 3248 which is 13.533 x 17.225 according to Photoshop). I'm just not really sure how print quality works (or printing at all, really). Is it best to print an image larger than its intended document size or resized to be exactly the doc size?

Click to expand...

It seems just right as it is.

4134 x 3248 is 1.27:1 which is 14x11 shape.

4134 pixels / 14 inches is 295 dpi. We aim for 300 dpi, but plus/minus 15% is fine. The print shops probably do 250 dpi anyway.


For online printing, it will not matter if the file indicates 240 dpi at 17 inches. They don't care, only the pixels are important to them. They will scale it, and if you order 11x14, you will get 11x14. You have insured the correct aspect ratio, so they won't cut any off, and you have insured sufficient pixels, and that's all you need to do.

If you print it on your home printer, and it says 240 dpi at 17 inches, it will try to do that (most printers don't do 17 inches though). Just saying, our printers look at the dpi number in the file, but online printing does not. They go by the number of pixels, and the ordered paper size.

WayneF said:

It seems just right as it is.

4134 x 3248 is 1.27:1 which is 14x11 shape.

4134 pixels / 14 inches is 295 dpi. We aim for 300 dpi, but plus/minus 15% is fine. The print shops probably do 250 dpi anyway.


For online printing, it will not matter if the file indicates 240 dpi at 17 inches. They don't care, only the pixels are important to them. They will scale it, and if you order 11x14, you will get 11x14. You have insured the correct aspect ratio, so they won't cut any off, and you have insured sufficient pixels, and that's all you need to do.

If you print it on your home printer, and it says 240 dpi at 17 inches, it will try to do that (most printers don't do 17 inches though). Just saying, our printers look at the dpi number in the file, but online printing does not. They go by the number of pixels, and the ordered paper size.

Click to expand...

Thanks! I think I understand it. I'm excited to finally print out some of my pictures.