Resolution question

[Gigi1]

So, of all the pictures that I've taken, I've never actually printed any of them... (one of these days)

A friend of mine wants me to print a few of my pics to 5x7. Since I've never done this before, and am still pretty much a beginner can someone help me with the resolution?

I tried printing one of them, but it came out all pixelated and horrible. Can anyone tell me what resolution or numbers I'm supposed to be printing on?

Thanks!

[Woody]

Hello Gigi,

I always take photos in the highest resolution my camea is capable of. At the moment I use Raw plus JPEG L that gives me a 4272x2848 shot of more than 8mb.

I can print to the side of a bus if I want or I can reduce to 40kb to post to this site as well.

As storage is cheap I don't see this as a proble.

So set your camera to the highest res and go from there.

Cheers,

John

Sydney Australia

[Nicole]

You should be able to print a good 5x7" picture if you have about a 1000x1400px photo. Ideally you'd want 1500x2100. There's some more info on that here. If you've done a lot of cropping to a photo it's possible that it would be too small to print that size. Or if you've done a lot of edits and and a lot of resaves the quality has decreased. But those numbers should give you a guideline. And if you have that size image, then you have a starting place to help us narrow it down.

[sfisher]

Originally Posted by Gigi1

A friend of mine wants me to print a few of my pics to 5x7. Since I've never done this before, and am still pretty much a beginner can someone help me with the resolution?

Print resolution is specifiec in pixels per inch (ppi). If you have a 500 x 700 image and you set the resolution to 100 ppi then you will get a 5 x 7 inch print. As a general rule, the print resolution should be a minimum of 300 ppi for highest quality (hence Nicole's recommendation of 1500 x 2100 pixels). Lower values will be fine, as long as you don't go too low ('too low' will depend on how picky you are!).

It's worth noting that most compact cameras produce images with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and most DSLRs produce images with a 3:2 aspect ratio. 7:5 is somewhere in the middle of these, so you'll almost certainly have to crop the image to achieve a 5 x 7 print.

[dcclark]

Typically, you do not choose the ppi/dpi at which you will print. It is determined automatically by two things: the number of pixels in your image, and the physical dimensions (5x7, 8x10, etc.) at which you want to print. Setting the dpi or ppi in photoshop (or whatever program you use) will either do nothing, or else cause your photo to print at a size you may not have intended.

If you printed and it came out blocky, you may have some other settings wrong. What did you use to print, and what settings did you use? What are the dimensions (in pixels) of your image?

Finally, a bit of advice about dpi/ppi. The "300 dpi minimum" thing is thrown around a lot. It really isn't right, though. If I showed you a 5x7 print at 300 dpi, and a 5x7 print at 200 dpi, you would not be able to tell the difference without a jeweller's loupe. Going up to 400 dpi would be equally impossible to notice.

On the other hand, dropping below 100 dpi may be genuinely noticeable, at small print sizes -- I bet that you somehow managed to print at 96 dpi or 72 dpi (common computer monitor resolutions), which will be noticeably blocky. However, I have printed 16x20 posters at 120 dpi before, and they look great -- because you would never view them from 6 inches away! So don't get too caught up in dpi, unless you can actually see the blockiness happening.