Try again Problem after editing to printing

[idontknow97]

Hi all I am having problems after I take my pictures and save them to my computer, I like to go in and play around with unique edits, however lately when printing them (even taking them somewhere to be printed) they are looking more grainy or pixelated. Some people said check the camera (I did highest setting available), others said maybe DPI or compression on the photo when editing using free programs. I would like to clear this up please please help.

[prabbit237]

Originally Posted by idontknow97

editing using free programs.

My guess is that part right there. If you have a program that saves only in .jpg format, it loses some info every time it saves. Opening a picture once, edit it and save it, yer probably OK. But open it, edit, save, open again (in same program or different one), edit, save, rinse and repeat several times and you start building up serious degradation.

It's much like this series of sentences:

Now's the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
Now' the time fr all good men to com to the aid of ther contry.
Nw' the tim fr all god mn to com to the ad of thr contr.
Nw th tm fr all god mn t com t th ad of thr contr.

Basically, jpg format tries to throw away unneeded info to make the file smaller. Using high-quality compression, the info thrown away between any two passes isn't really important (such as from any one of those sentences to the next, it didn't lose much and was still readable as being the previous one. And if it'd been a whole page of words and missing just 5 letters each time, you probably would have a hard time picking out just WHICH 5 letters were gone. But it does become worse and worse every time you go through it.

A program that can save in .tiff, .bmp or other "non-lossy" format would be better (or do ALL edits in one pass and, if the program has settings for such, save in the highest quality .jpg file possible.)

[OsmosisStudios]

I dont think it's overly aggressive LZW jpg compression. I've got a funny feeling it's the software itself and the edits that are being done. Can you post an example of the image you're trying to have printed? THe full file would be best

[idontknow97]

Ok hopefulyl I load them correctly the one of my son running there were people in the picture I wanted to crop out and adjust the saturation a little the beach one I just basically cropped and adjusted the lighting and the other one is one I did the most edits to the black and white with color. Could it be certain ways or types of printing, like I mentioned in another post I downloaded a free trial of photoshop elements where I can crop and save and put the dpi in at the same time.

[idontknow97]

Ok they came up and they always look half way good on the screen lol, also ISO does that have an effect?

[idontknow97]

The one program I use I just saw that I can go in and when I save the edit I can choose the DPI and the image type they say I can choose from jpeg, bmp, png, gif so should I set this each time I save a file and which one of those is best? Thanks.

[idontknow97]

I also just figured out that I have the software (came with camera) to convert raw images to jpg or tiff (should I use this the most the raw image that is) even if I am not going to change anything or if for like a party with a lot of shots use the regular setting of the jpg on the computer how do you know when to use each one, I am going to take a few both ways and see what prints better.

[OsmosisStudios]

Are these the actual files you're using for printing, or are they smaller versions?

[prabbit237]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Are these the actual files you're using for printing, or are they smaller versions?

That was my question as well when seeing them. If these are the ones yer printing from, then the print quality will suffer right there. For a 4x6" print, you'd want a min of (4*240dpi)x(6*240dpi) or 960x1440 in size. Otherwise they start having quality issues. My wife will find some picture on some website that's a 600x450 (common sizes for myspace pics, for example) and want to get it printed and just won't understand that it'd look like pure crap at anything over a 2"x3" size.) On the camera, shoot at the highest resolution and also the lowest ISO you possibly can get away with (I try to leave mine at 80.)

If yer camera saves raw, then use that for all edits (you may need a converter program to convert to a .tiff image for editing. The Faststone viewer/editor is good for that and it's free.) If the editor doesn't allow for saving as .tiff, then save as .bmp (huge file size but doesn't lose any quality.) You can convert to .jpg for uploading to the web or taking to the store for printing, etc. but keep the .tiff or .bmp for any future edits.

As to the dpi itself, that's no real concern other than to tell what's the biggest size that resolution can handle. Most printers for photo-quality stuff print at 240-300dpi (so using 240dpi in calculations for max print size is safe.) If you have a picture that's 1024x786 and took it to Walmart for printing, it'll print the same if you specified 20dpi as if you specified 20,000dpi (i.e. they'll ignore that and go based on the over-all size you told them to print, such as 4"x6" or 8"x10", etc.) But if you leave the DPI at 240 (a fairly standard number) then many programs will tell you what the print size would be; such as the Old Navy picture, set to 240dpi and the same resolution, shows a print size of 3.4"x4.3" (or smaller.) So forcing it to print at 4x6 or 5x7 will result in poorer quality. It might not be really huge difference but it'll be there.

And considering I'm still pretty new to all this myself, I probably don't know what I'm talking about and the above is probably completely off-base and wrong So use it at yer own risk

[idontknow97]

Yes those were the files I was using (what would I do to fix that) and my camera does have a regular raw setting and another raw setting and I just found out it came with software to convert it to tiff (and I think 16 or 8 with the tiff) or jpg for printing after you can correct like the white balance ect... but for some reason I am hesitent to shoot in just raw as I dont want to mess it up. I am going to try a few and see how they print and the photoshop elementss trial let me choose the size like 8 x 10 and the dpi and the raw converter thing I am not sure just took a practice one and edited it then saved it to jpg to print and see how it come out.