need help cropping for enlargement print
 

Hi. I cant stand it anymore. I have being working on photoshop for a year now doing digital photography. It was a crash course and I taught myself. I have been doing wedding photography. Never did that before either. I am offering enlargements of photos and printing them myself. I need to figure out how to crop and size for enlargements 13 x19 without losing quality. I am kind of mixed up in my head about the sizing issues. I was cropping and losing quality for 8x10's so I sure want to get this straight before printing 13 x19's. I got genuine fractals and I go thru all of the steps and get it so the numbers are pretty close to 13 x19 then click on "apply" and this takes it into photoshop cs and I then check the image size and it says 8 x 10 or some other size. I think I am missing some understanding of the cropping and sizing issues because I just cannot figure it out. I am wondering if I should just get it as close to 13 x 19 as I can and then use the crop tool in ps set at 13 x19. any ideas? thank you so much. Moonbeam

hi moonbeam, and welcome to RP.

ok, you lost me here: do you mean 'fractions' instead of 'fractals'? and you hit 'apply' on what that takes you into photoshop? what are you working with?

Craig

Craig,

Genuine Fractals is a resizing plugin for Photoshop. It's suppose to be a really good program for resizing but I have never used it.

Moonbeam,

Just curious- but what kind of resolution are you starting with? IE- how many megapixels does your camera have? It helps to know what we are working with. Trying to make a 13x19 print out of a 2 point camera is just not going to happen. Well you could do it, but it's not going to be pretty. so what are we working with? What kind of camera is it? (another just curious-)

Thanks-

~Amber~

thanks
 

hi Amber, thanks for the response. I just checked the board just now to see if I got any responses. I use 2 cameras , a nikon d70 and a cannon . the megapixel is not the problem. I think my problem lies in getting confused with cropping and sizing. sometimes I crop from a crop and I am wondering if I do that, do I lose quality. I have had a tough time in getting the correct color etc for prints to come out good. They are coming out good now. I shoot in raw now and use nikon capture to open them and then take them into ps. I got genuine fractals to help me keep the quality when I enlarge to the 13x19 size. I have struggled thru learning ps on my own after I started doing wedding photography (which I had never done before. actually I have never really done photography) now here I am a year later shooting in raw, doing lots of photo shoots and getting pretty good. Not only did I have to learn photography, but I had to learn ps to correct all of my mistakes I made along the way. Every thing is pretty much coming together now. but I am confused about the cropping. One thing that would help me a lot is the answer to this question: If I want to print out an 8x10 do I need to use the 8x10 cropping tool, and likewise 5x7? I guess I should get my books out and look this up. thanks for your help. Moonbeam

thanks craig
 

thanks for your reply. I use photoshop cs and I just got a plug in called genuine fractals. I am just starting to use it, but have been so busy, I havent had a chance to get to know it yet. I think my biggest problem is that I just dont fully understand sizing and cropping and what you shouldnt do if you dont want to lose quality for prints. Thanks for the welcome too. I have been a member for a few months now, but have not posted much, probably just an intro until now. It looks like a great forum and quite active. I will have to take the time to come back often. thanks again. Moonbeam

I found this forum and it might help some of your questions.

http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1581

And they talk about some other programs as well. I would love to tell you that you can print a 13x19 print for the D70, but I am afraid I can't. I have the rebel which is it's counterparty. And I wouldn't attempt a 11x13 unless I had the sharpest picture to start with, shot it Raw, and most likely not cropped. And I have no experiance with any programs that resize. Have you tried www.dpreview.com or www.photo.net? You might have better luck there.

~Amber~

Cropping
 

If you have a raw image brought into PS, set your crop tool for 13x19 and make sure you use at least 300dpi resolution for the tool itself. If you leave this blank, you'll end up with a large low res image. I had a pro do just that today. His image came across as a 16x20 at 74DPI. I work in a digital lab/studio which is outfitted with Nikon D70's. We shoot JPG, and I can still print a 30x40 with very little work.

thank you
 

thank you all for responding. I really appreciate it. 12fretter: I think you may have zoomed in on my problem. When I work in photoshop I just use any size cropping tool , whatever I have up. for example I may crop the images all with a crop tool set at 5x7. then later when I retrieve it to print out I try to resize it to fit the paper. If I want a 5x7 it prints out in the middle of my letter size paper, but if I want an 8x10 I have to resize it or use another printing software. At any rate, should I only crop an image once and then print. And it looks like I need to crop to the size I want to print. So if I want to print a few different sizes of one image , do I need to bring up that image each time fresh and then set the crop tool for each size print each time? Hopefully, we are getting somewhere here. I find it hard to believe that you shoot in jpg with a d70 and hardly have to do anything and you get a great enlargement. I must be doing a few things wrong. Thank you so much for your help. Moonbeam

Moonbeam,

Your D70 can easily do a really well shot image at 13x19 but can your printer?

You need to look at Image> image size

IT will do your sizing [sp] for you but I think you need to look at the end need. I don't know what you are printing on but if it is a 2200, you don't want to sell it as a 13x19. Maybe a 12x18 or there abouts at 240 ppi which is about right for that size prints viewing distance.

If you are producing images in the 12 x 18 size range there is no need to try to keep an image at 300+ ppi

Hi Moonbeam,

My workflow (might not be everyones ...) ;)

-Open up jpeg, save as photoshop with new name = oldname_work.psd
-correct color and do art work
-Duplicate merged and crop to size and dpi desired, save as oldname_5x7.psd (for example)

This way I don't accidently make an image smaller (losing image information) and then try to resize larger with lower quality.

Sounds like you are degrading the image with your workflow. I doubt the necessity of Fractals to achieve a 13x19 from your captures. Recapping some of the points above and inserting a bit of my own workflow.

1.After importing the RAW file into Photoshop save as a .psd, "not .jpg". Every time you edit and save a jpg there is a resultant compression loss and it will show up on a 13x19. If you need to do further editing to your RAW file, make a "Duplicate" image, and perform the edits on the Duplicate. Essentially your RAW import is your negative, save it untouched, and the Duplicate of your RAW is your working negative, save it also. imagename_raw, imagename_working.

2. After you have made the necessary edits on the RAW file Duplicate, make a "Duplicate" image for "each" crop size required, and crop. As mentioned above, I put the image size in the file name to avoid confusion, imagename_5x7.psd, imagename_13x19.psd.

3. Anything from 240 to 300 DPI will print, I use 288 DPI as my working resolution.

4. I save files in sub-folders within a job name folder. I title the subfolders: Original, Edit, Print. orig_filename.psd, edit_filename_57.psd, print_filename_1319.psd, etc.

To recap pertinent points, save as .psd, and get into the habit of working on duplicate images. I am not suggesting you have to save a whole bunch of files permanently, but it does come in handy if you need to revisit the file at a future date for another print, or re-edit with new found knowledge. best...skip

Image resize
 

I disagree that Image Resize does the same thing. On a 4x6 image, you can't simply change the image size to 8x10, the math doesn't work. You have to get rid of an inch off a 4x6 to get the crop of an 8x10. The crop tool is the only tool to do this accurately. As long as you enter the resolution you want the new cropped image to be, along with the size, you should be fine.