[Bristol Pete]

Hi,

As some of you may know I have just returned from a fantastic trip around Australia in prep for possible migration to live. Anyway, I took a Canon 75 along, a modest mouse of a camera with 3 mp capability. Anyway, I took about 5000 pictures over there and have spent the last two days picking out 500 shots which I wanted printed as my folks are paying for this as my xmas gift.

Anyway, collected them earlier, £7.00 for 100 prints by the way - and I have to say that I am feeling a little deflated. The reason. Well, I only had a 256mb compact flash card over there and was very aware of the cost of having to keep having CD's burnt etc as I did not take my lap top. As such, I stuck with 1024 x 768 which look OK, some are at 800 x 600 and look average to maximise picture opps when out and about rather than filling up the card. However, when I ramped up the res to 1536 x 2048 with vivid and super fine selected, the printed difference is astounding. Now I feel a little flat, though the other pictures are fine, they dont quite have the pin sharp, post card feel to them that maybe 100 do.

The point of my post I suppose is that digital photography is such a learning curve which is great but needs planning. Had I known this beforehand I would have

a. bought a 2 gig card and a spare! £47.00 online.....

b. taken every pic in the highest setting, vivid and super fine.

c. taken larry the laptop and USB lead!

Anyway, just wanted to maybe say that preparation is the key. Sadly its not like I can just go back and catch them again but I will certainly know for next time. I hope by then to have a lovely digital SLR with something like 8~10mp as I caught the bug out there and can only wonder what the pictures would look like. The reality is that I still have 500 great memories printed but some leap out over others........

All the best,

Pete.

[Peakoverload]

Originally Posted by Captain Benefit

Hi,

Sadly its not like I can just go back and catch them again.

Erm, I thought you said you were emigrating there?

Sorry to hear about the photos but all is not lost. Nab yourself a copy of Genuine Fractals or if you cant afford that then use Photoshop and resize them 110% at a time until they are of a sufficient size to print.

Both methods use interpolation to create the 'missing' pixels which are needed to make the print bigger. Genuine Fractals does it using a special algorythm that makes it very hard to spot the duplicated pixles allowing you to enlarge quite small photos to Very large sizes. The Photoshop 110% method is sometimes thought of as the Poor Mans Genuine Fractals and although it doesnt do quite as good a job as GF the results are excellent as long as the start image isnt too small (which yours dont sound as though they are) and you dont blow them up too big (you should easily be able to go to A4 probably A3 or larger using this method)

HTH

[stevegreen]

Thats a shame Pete, but if you do go out there to live at least you will have the chance to capture them again on a higher setting.

I must admit, I hardly ever have any pictures printed as I tend to stick to the total digital route and view them on my laptop. I have made the same mistake as you though in taking pics at a lower resolution, one of them a photo comp entry Mine is now permanently on the highest resolution and on superfine just to ensure I get the best I can out of my A95.

Maybe you could cheat a little and make a montage of some of the nicest 'poor quality' pics and just make one big print with the pictures being smaller, if you know what I mean

[Bristol Pete]

Erm, I thought you said you were emigrating there?

Nope never ever said its a definate. Refer to general chat and search. Always said that was testing the water. Still got things here to sort first and the whole process takes a while. Certainly have an opinion of Oz now however. Cheers.

Steve. Good idea. In perspective the bulk are not that bad as 1024 x 768 is pretty good and most folk who want to see photos in an album (ma and Pa etc) rather than the laptop will be completely oblivious to the merits of resolution or lack of it and simply go 'Great pics mate'. oh and the other odd 4000 look great on the lap top.

Pete.

[Bristol Pete]

Actually, just had another good look and they are not that bad at all. I was thinking that when I picked them up earlier, the guy was still working on them. It seems as if they have dried out somewhat and they look great and they higher res pics look bloody fantastic. Cool.

[dejongj]

The 110% is a very good tip! I've done that and the difference compared to doing a say 200% enlargement is absolutely amazing...With many little steps at the time there is hardly any quality loss....
Try it for definite and you'll be amazed in the quality you can extract....

[HCking]

dont forget to size your pics to 300dpi as you resize / crop. (as most print houses print at this size)

As for the scale in 110% sizes, I have tried this and with each increase in size you loose sharpness and introduce noise, if you are not going large just say upto A4 I can see it working but any larger and noise sharpness colour and the overall image will suffer quite badly.
there was a test run between genuine fractals and photoshop cs2 and the image quality was found to be about the same with GF just ever so slightly better, the reviewer stated if you dont have GF and are not selling or showing your prints not to bother buying.

I see you found the "shoot in largest file size available or RAW/TIF if available".

Have a play around with your images you will find you can get that extra bit out of them in photoshop or elements.

Can you post some of your pics for us to have a look at

cheers

Mark