I have a great shot of my son that I want to enlarge into a poster sized print.

I want to learn how to tweak a photo before bringing it to enlargement.

Somebody recommended Irfanview software that has an enlargement tool.

I also own PSP 8.0, but don't really know how to use it.

The photo was taken by my Canon 2 megapixel camera. The image is 1600x1200 pixels and 8.8" x 6.6". 180.000 PIXELS PER INCH. Pixel depth/colors 24/16 million.

How do I enlarge this photo to a poster size with screwing the image up?

i'LL ATTACH THE PHOTO FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO HELP ME MANIPULATE IT.

I could tell you one of the ways of enlaging the photo... and it is an exception photo....
but you also mentioned tweak... which I associate with touching up sharpening etc..
there will shortly be many answers here I'm sure.. otherwise I'll come back and walk you thru irfanview.
but the advice I wanted to give may be more important if you aren't already aware.
How do I enlarge this photo to a poster size with screwing the image up?
save the photo again in another file or use a different name... somewhere safe in case you corrupt the one you are working on.
save it just the way it came from the camera.... more than once maybe. over time you may become more skilled and will be glad you have the original to work with once more.
irfanview is my favorite viewer... I never use the tools included but I am sure they will enlarge the photo well for you... for more indepth editing PSP8 is the way to go... carefull though.... easy to get hooked on this sort of software :)

Hi bsacco,

Welcome to RP! :pleased:

You are absolutely right there .... what a great shot!!!! :) :)

I think it's great as it is .... the only things I did here (not really necessary...) were removing the zipper's head(?) from your son's chin and improve the contrast very, very lightly...

rondon,

...please, 'come back' and "and walk you thru irfanview" ... I'm also very interested in learning that!!! Thank you in advance! :)

There is a photoshop action called enlarge.zip which is in the resources download area of this site. Basically it enlarges the image by 10% repeatedly. That seems to work quite well for upsampling an image.

I'd be glad to... I thought maybe a PSP user might happen by with advice

I made this little photo as a guide... I tend to overwrite assistance otherwise ;) ..

I hope this helps

Iview is a really terrific viewer all sorts of little gizmos ... here's one

with a photo open click enter for fullscreen then use the mouse wheel or left/right mouse buttons to view other photos in the folder.... also click "T" to bring up the thumbnails of the folder with a file tree for navigation.

bye

Extensis has an application that is supposed to work well with up scaling.
<http://www.extensis.com/en/products/product_family.jsp?locale=en_US&id=prod120009>
PXL smartscale. Cost ~$200.

Hi rondon,

...thank you so much for your speedy reaction... and great tip! :pleased:

Can you believe I've been using Iview since years (and I also think it's just terrific!!!!) .... but never really ventured beyond viewing or slideshow!!!!

Thanks again for your help!!

Hi philbach,

thank you for the tip on the action and for the link!! :pleased:

I also just use it for viewing or sometimes moving photos around although That could be smoother.

Paint shop pro is a nice program ... like a lot of other folks I started with it. gets very confusing trying to use it once we have Photoshop though.

I was hoping someone would offer advice on resizing with it instead.. that way bsacco would be getting familar with psp.. really a better editor than Iview I think..

I also remember it had a remarkable text tool..

Chow :)

Hi bsacco and welcome to Retouch Pro,

The 110% method damages low level detail really quickly, and I usually advise that it not be used. Check out my post here (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showpost.php?p=80797&postcount=9) for examples and more info on why and how.

Drastic resizing involves a lot of bluring and magnification of imperfections. But this image looks like the detail should hold up pretty well to this kind of work.

Standard poster sizes are 22x34, 23x35, 24x36, 27x41 and 30x40. Because it would be really hard to crop to one of the other sizes I would go with a 30x40 or a proportionally smaller one and matte it (for example 24x32 with a 4 inch double matte).

Open the image, without resampling, change it to 100DPI (most poster printers prefer this because anything more over runs the buffers in the printer.) Turn resampleing on and double the image size (bringing it up to 24x32) then increase the image size up to 30x40. This will minimize the interpolation and maintain more of the detail.

I usually suggest one should never resize an image more than once, but increasing by more than 200% or reducing less than 50% is the exception.

Hope that helps,

Michael

PS Contact the people you want to print it and ask them what resolution to use.

Can you get a quality poster size image from a 2 Mp camera??