Mobile (cell) phone images

[Britsdad]

Hi all,

I help out a friend in the local market on Saturdays printing onto, and mounting canvases onto frames, people bring thier photos and I try to make them printable. The problem I have are the ones that come in with a mobile phone image that to them looks great on thier tiny screen, but is a real pain to get good enough for a print.
This attachment is one such image, not greatly compressed from the original I had to work with either.
Now, I have been doing this "work" for about a year now, so I've figured out what looks best when printed on canvas, and it is quite a forgiving medium, but does anyone have a suggestion on how to get such an image as good as possible for printing onto an A3 size (somtimes even a 24" x 20"!!!) canvas.
The customer wanted this as a black and white print, which sometimes makes it worse, really enhancing the artifacts.

Regards...John

Oh by the way I'm useing PS CS3

[Britsdad]

AH.....No answer, was the quiet reply :-)

Can't blame anyone for that.

John

[Littlecoo]

It's unfortunate that this is a rather soft image to start with and enlarging the bejeezus out of it is going to compound the problem. I've gotten a few of these sorts of images from time to time so I do feel your pain. For some of these images I have tried 'artifying', resizing and tidying them up as best I can then reworking them as a smudge painting or using paint, sketch etc effects to cover artifacts and problems with image softness/lack of detail. Depending on the image content I have gotten some really nice results- from photos that would have otherwise been unusable.

[Flora]

Hi,

Littlecoo was faster... her advice is exactly what I had thought as well.

I would try to enlarge the image to the desired size (here a google search for available software for that purpose and here a Thread on the subject), then if the result isn't satisfying,

Originally Posted by Littlecoo

...reworking them as a smudge painting or using paint, sketch etc effects to cover artifacts and problems with image softness/lack of detail...

... I think that this procedure can give very good results on a baby portrait.

[palms]

Originally Posted by Britsdad

Hi all,

I help out a friend in the local market on Saturdays printing onto, and mounting canvases onto frames, people bring thier photos and I try to make them printable. The problem I have are the ones that come in with a mobile phone image that to them looks great on thier tiny screen, but is a real pain to get good enough for a print.
This attachment is one such image, not greatly compressed from the original I had to work with either.
Now, I have been doing this "work" for about a year now, so I've figured out what looks best when printed on canvas, and it is quite a forgiving medium, but does anyone have a suggestion on how to get such an image as good as possible for printing onto an A3 size (somtimes even a 24" x 20"!!!) canvas.
The customer wanted this as a black and white print, which sometimes makes it worse, really enhancing the artifacts.

Regards...John

Oh by the way I'm useing PS CS3

sorry John cant help you but out of interest which area is the market in ? useful thing to know !

palms

[Britsdad]

Thanks for the advise all,
I did try "artifying" one or two of these phone images but the owners are intent on having a "real image" on the canvas, and you can see in their eyes that they thought it would turn out better, and I feel for them when I have to tell them that this is the best they're going to get. (ah well you can't please everyone :-( )

Palms, My friend has a double stall inside Mexborough Market (as you can see from my profile, I'm from South Yorkshire) on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday called Heroreprographics, quite a nice little set up, I've been with him for about a year now, he set up just to print canvases but since I joined him he's branched out into all kinds of graphics areas. If you (or anyone else come to that) are in the area call in and introduce yourself, I'm only there on Saturdays, sat with my laptop, from 9.30 ish to 4.30, I do have a real job during the week ;-)

John

[Cupcake]

Here is the picture,
some fixing with painting.

Larger file if wanted.

[Britsdad]

Nice one Cupcake,

I know where to come next time You are far better artist than me.

John

[spotter]

2 things I can think of. 1 may be just wishful thinking on my part.
I use the opera browser and if I have a picture I want to work on that is too small,I open it in the browser and pull the zoom slider up until the pic fills the screen,then press print screen. While I know this wont make it better defined or anything, it does seem to sometimes help with sizing upwards.
You could do it in any prog that lets you expand the pic full screen really.
The other thing is much simpler LOL
Make a sign and have the maximum sizes on that can be printed from mobile phone pictures,camera pics etc. Then you can just point at it helplessly when you are asked for the impossible. Print has huge power in convincing.

[Britsdad]

Thanks for looking in Spotter,
Yea, good idea that, maybe people will take note, and think about what they are asking before they ask it.

John