Should i resize images before printing

If you don't first crop it to fit the paper, the paper shape itself will crop it, sometimes in a surprising way. For example, a 4x6 image is a long and relatively narrow shape, and will not fit 4x5 paper , which is shorter and relatively wider, a bit closer to square. Image size is adjustable, but Shape can only be cropped. Image shape must fit the photo paper shape. This Crop to fit the paper can be a trivially easy operation see Cropping on next page.

We don't need any math skills. Better photo editors Adobe Elements for example should have a simple cropping option to declare the desired paper aspect ratio to be cropped enter crop as 8x10 shape for example , and then any image crop box we can draw on the image will be this exact shape meaning shape, not size. We simply mark its crop size to include what we want to include, and it will be that shape and we can move it around as desired. As for size, our crop result does need to have sufficient pixels to print at about to pixels per inch of paper e.

More detail on next page. Regardless if the image is oriented portrait or landscape vertical or horizontal , all of these are still SHAPE of This shape will print "as is" on 4x6 paper, but all other paper sizes probably are all different shapes. It is just a way to describe a rectangular shape with numbers, the simple ratio of the lengths of the two sides. There are two similar ways to describe this shape in numbers. For example, for a x pixel image, the ratio of the two sides is , which we reduce to say Same thing, and we may encounter it either way typically we say it as , but we compute with 1.

Also 2. These are the same paper "shape", just depending on which way the image is rotated. The usual "correct" ratio is when the image is viewed in its proper upright orientation, then aspect ratio is Width:Height, whichever that is.

We all understand it either way, but by convention, camera sensors images yet untaken are generally named landscape orientation largest first, or or or , but print paper purchased still blank is normally named as portrait orientation smaller first, 4x6 or 5x7 or 8x10 or 8. Obviously the paper can be rotated either way for printing, and we match that by specifying either Portrait or Landscape orientation in our printer driver options, which then simply rotates the image correctly for that paper orientation load the paper the right way.

Aspect ratio is only critical when matching an image shape to one printed paper shape, or maybe to full screen monitor shape.

Only one ratio fits another shape. And since many shapes exist, no one ratio number is very important, except for your current match, when it is all important. Size and Shape are different things. Cropping can change the image shape to fit the paper shape.

When we only enlarge the image size, it stays the same shape. A image can fit 4x5 or 8x10 paper, but is not the shape of 4x6 or 5x7 paper. If you use a DSLR or 35 mm film and only print 6x4 prints, these are the same shape, so you may never realize there is any problem.

But all other combinations will see a problem. Photo images from a compact or phone camera are shape long side is 1. However, is NOT a common paper shape. Some photo printing labs offer 4x5. And 6x8 or 9x12 inch paper may be available a few places. Phone and compact camera images are typically , which will Not fit 4x6, 5x7, or 8x10 inch print paper without cropping.

DSLR images typically are , and Will fit 4x6 inch paper. But neither nor will fit 5x7 or 8x10 inch paper without cropping. This definitely IS something to think about.

Letting the automation just crop it with the paper edges can be a surprise, perhaps with cut off heads, etc. It is very easy to crop them correctly yourself first, solving all problems, achieving your own goals.

A rough visual guide in the camera viewfinder, for estimating the planned crop lines for future printing: In Viewfinder DSLR In Viewfinder compact or phone Note that the cropping need not be centered, it could be all at one side or the other, just positioned as needed to frame the important view.

And note that if cropping it smaller than this retaining same ratio , both width and height will be reduced. Cropping serves two purposes, for the best appearance, and to fit the print paper. In general, cropping a little tighter often pictorially improves many images anyway removes empty, uninteresting, or distracting surroundings, and makes the subject a bit larger.

Often it can be a big plus. The "long" paper dimension is the same pixels in all three but a browser screen smaller than pixels can affect how that appears here. This Crop to fit paper can be a trivially easy operation see Cropping on next page , and fitting the paper print is definitely something you need to know.

Both format now matches printing on 6x4 paper size Kodak's standard tips for Taking Great Pictures always emphasized "Get Closer". Cropping tighter later can correct to serve the same purpose if it leaves sufficient pixels remaining , and cropping is usually a necessary step for printing anyway to match the paper shape to the image shape.

Opinions will always vary about specific details, but cropping is very easy to do. The biggest benefit is to first give it a seconds thought in the viewfinder. Slightly changing camera position to choose background can be a big help sometimes.

Most printing labs where we send photo files to be printed set up their machines to fill all of the paper. Normally they won't underfill the paper to leave white space, they will instead cut something off the image if necessary. If you order 5x7, you will get 5x7, but you may not get your entire image.

This means if you print your images without first preparing them cropping them to the correct shape to fit the paper ordered , you may see surprises about parts of your image cut off, not showing in the final print.

This is nothing new with digital cameras, film was always the same thing. The film negative has a shape too, generally simply not the same shape as the print paper. However back then, there was a human operator watching and controlling and making decisions and adjusting things for film images. Digital machines are automatic inexpensive prints , but digital does make it easy for us to crop it right first. Many online photo printing web sites offer a crop tool there online, and also ordering sometimes warns when our image is not the same size as the selected paper.

And some processors offer an option to "Print Full Image", meaning, they won't crop anything off, but will instead leave blank white space borders where it doesn't fit the paper. You can trim the paper smaller then.

But generally, the paper shape itself is going to crop it, and a different shape simply will not fit And the point is that when we crop it ourself, then we see it, and we can judge and decide ourselves which portion of the image is to be cropped away We cannot fully print a 4x6 image on 4x5 paper.

The purpose of this next aspect ratio calculator is to help give an idea of the crop for the aspect ratio of the paper you want it to fit. The calculator is a minor thing see details in Cropping section on next page for the actual procedure , but perhaps the numbers can make the major point that cropping to fit the paper shape is usually very necessary.

The paper is usually NOT the same shape as the image, so we can choose to fit the long side to the paper, or to fit the short side to the paper. The point of the calculator is to show that image shape and paper shape are often NOT the same shape so we must crop the image shape to fit the paper. Most camera images won't fit the paper without cropping.

Results are better if we crop it ourself, for our choice about what is to be cropped off. It will provide an accurate answer about the result it intends, but instead it's an overdone effort for illustrative purposes, just to show the concept involved , to show the problem we always need to solve when printing. Better maybe, the Summary chart probably is more clear, and should be informative. The image and the paper need to be the same shape, but usually are not, not until we correct by cropping the image to match the paper shape.

In regular use, your photo editors crop and resample tools should be very adequate, if you understand the situation and know your goal next page.

This one is about shape aspect ratio. It compares paper shape to image shape, and reports any mismatch. Here, specify your image shape and your paper shape numbers.

Calculations assume borderless printing. The calculator just computes the precise image numbers with shape which fit the paper shape. Another option is to enter "Other" for paper, and then enter any actual paper dimensions. But the shapes of the image and paper do need to match fairly closely.

Again, you can enter it as inches or mm or cm. Entering 5x4 or 10x8 or 50x40 or x80 will all give the same answer, because it is Not about size, this one is only about shape aspect in this example, all of which here divide out to be 1. The only dimensions used here are paper aspect ratio and image pixels trying to emphasize the concept of image and paper SHAPE.

The Summary Chart assumption is that the print shop will fill the specified paper shape. The percent error is the cropped off percentage of the image when the paper is filled. The words End or Width here refer simply to the cropped long End or the narrow paper Width both Portrait or Landscape Orientation can fit.

But if only one dimension is fitted leaving blank space on the other side, the same percentage applies to the blank space. Most example paper sizes it shows are common to inches, but the same numbers could be mm sizes too, since this one is only about shape. The procedure to prepare the image for printing: Crop image to shape matching paper shape, and for best appearance Then resample to size pixel dimensions appropriate for paper size and the printing resolution. After this concept is realized, then see Another Calculator for a more elaborate working tool about the image you will need.

But actually, that is overkill too still trying to show the concept , since once the concept is understood, then most photo editor resize boxes alone ought to be fully sufficient for preparing for printing see next page, crop to shape, then resample to size. Size is adjustable, but shape must be cropped The calculator allows comparing an image to a paper shape ratio. Selecting "Other Shape" selects the two WxH boxes below it for paper shape.

The largest Crop possible maximum dimensions to fit the paper shape is shown for the situations of fitting the long or the short side to the paper shape. Summary of Shape Mismatches Filled paper shape will crop off the: This is a summary of common results of three common image shapes on eleven paper shapes aspect ratios. Comparing shapes, the second column computes dimensions of "an 8 inch" print width on each paper shape.

The Calculators require JavaScript be enabled in your browser. The exact percentage numbers are not the point here. They are what they are, and any difference is not good. We know that a 4x6 image simply will not fit on 4x5 paper. And images and paper are often not the same shape, which means the image must be cropped to be the same shape as the paper. This is just trying to emphasize that point here.

We have good tools making this crop very easy to do, and it's an extremely important skill to learn. The point is, if you crop it yourself first, then how it turns out is your own choice.

More about cropping to aspect ratio on next page. Just a few pixels is normally no big deal, but otherwise, we should choose the best way to crop the image to the correct SHAPE first to match the paper shape , and after that if image is too large , then we might resample the image SIZE to print at about dpi on this paper. I worry that novices not yet familiar with images may miss the point.

Do realize that cropping to the paper shape is an extremely important issue when printing an image. Aspect ratio is just the simple ratio of the two sides. This ratio represents the Shape, the simple ratio of the sides. Like all math fractions, we normally reduce the to express it as the ratio , using the greatest common divisor method discovered by Euclid, 4th century B. GCD is in this case. Math does like exact numbers, and if our image had been x pixels, then greatest common divisor is 2, so reduction comes out , not exactly , and not as easily recognized the calculator may show rounded minor differences.

Crop to the print shape, and then resample to the print size and resolution described on next page. Not all programs offer an easy crop to print paper shape.

Gimp and PaintShop Pro do, most better editors do. It's a Crop or Marquee Tool option to specify a crop aspect ratio, and then any crop you mark matches the specified paper shape.

It's an essential tool for printing. Yes, resample tools typically provide an option to NOT preserve image proportions. That way, we could resample 4x5 to be 4x6, or to be 8x However, that distorts the image, stretching or shrinking one dimension instead of changing both dimensions equally.

Circles would become ovals for example. People could become tall and thin, or short and wide. For resampling photos, surely you always want resampling to preserve, retain, maintain, or constrain image proportions however the editor words it, which should be default. Image Size So image Shape is important, and also, image Size is important. We can crop the shape, and resample the size to be smaller — resampling larger does not add needed detail. Discussed on next page, but for printing goals, the necessary procedure should be to first crop image to match the paper shape, and then resample smaller to produce image size of about dpi.

More pixels really cannot help the printer, but very much less is detrimental to quality. This is very simple, but it is essential to know and keep track of. This simple little calculation will show the image size needed for optimum photo printing. This calculation is so simple, and is one thing you really need to know, and it should be second nature to you , to be considered when printing any image.

This simple little calculation shows the concept, and can serve two purposes: It will show the required image size pixels to print this paper size at the dpi resolution. Or same thing, x pixels printed 8x10 inches will be printed at dpi resolution. It will show the output image size created pixels if the area is scanned at the dpi resolution. Scanning 8x10 inches at dpi will produce x pixels. There is a larger dpi calculator that knows about scanning, printing, and enlargement.

It's important to realize that an area scanned at dpi will create the pixels necessary to also print the same size area at dpi. The concept either way is pixels per inch. Scanning and printing at dpi is likely what you want for a photo copy job a line art scan of black text or line drawings can use dpi well. However, this size does NOT need to be exact at all, dpi or dpi or dpi does not really matter much, but somewhere near this size ballpark of to pixels per inch is a very good thing for printing.

When viewing images on a monitor screen, we're used to images not filling the entire monitor screen. So while artistic cropping is still important, there is no paper shape to match. HDTV is x pixels or x pixels , and 6x4 inch prints at dpi is x pixels, close enough to same for either to show well on the HDTV screen assuming Landscape orientation , but printing on paper really needs the correct shape.

A printing tip: It is often artistically good to consider cropping a little tighter in camera, when taking the picture just meaning, show what you want to show, but think about it. Empty or extra space may not offer much, other than distractions from the subject. Gigapixel AI uses artificial intelligence to look at the image compared to millions of similar images and creates new pixels with this algorithm. This is a slow process and CPU intensive.

That is because it uses AI to create the missing pixels to come up with a proper scaling that interpolates new pixels that work with the image. It really does work quite well. Each image can take up to 5 minutes, depending upon size.

The resolution of the image is x pixels. Doing the math, for a print at dpi, the largest size for the native image not resized is A fair size, but not a huge image. In addition, the proportions are not exactly the same. Ideally, to get the dpi, we will want to print an image that is 10, x pixels.

You can read more about file formats here. That seems obvious, but there are ramifications of this. In general, the majority of the image data is located on the right side of the histogram. This means that to have a successful image it must be properly exposed or slightly underexposed and brought back in a raw editor.

Calibration of your monitor will ensure that the printed version of our image will be closer to the version you see on your monitor. In general, uncalibrated monitors are too bright. Using an uncalibrated monitor will result in prints that are much darker than what you see on your monitor.

This can sometimes happen even with a calibrated monitor too, but test prints will help assess how far off your monitor is from your prints. When you enlarge an image, you need to ensure that the noise levels are under control before you start. Enlarging an image with a lot of noise will only increase the amount of noise present. All resizing programs will do their best to examine the underlying data of your image and use it to scale upward, but the noise on an image will only get worse.

The sharpening of your image should only happen at the end of the process of resizing an image. Sharpening is a process of looking at areas of high contrast these are typically edges and emphasizing the transition to make those transitions seem more distinct. If you do this early in your editing process or during resizing, the scale of the sharpening will create halos or bizarre artifacts that will be really obvious.

Larger scale resizing through Gigapixel AI takes longer, but the results are substantially better. All you need to do is to launch the application and tell it how big you want the new image to be.

Press Start and go have a coffee, as it takes a little while. However, the results are really good. Finally, once you have resized the image to a larger size you need to print the image. There are basically two main methods to print images big. Chromogenic C-prints or Giclee inkjet prints. Both can produce big, high-quality images, but the processes are quite different as is the look of each. I generally prefer inkjet-based, but there are lots of people who still use C-print techniques.

When you print images big, there are lots of things to consider when resizing your images and then getting them ready to go to print. However, the results are truly breathtaking. If you have a great image and you take the proper steps to resize the image and print it big, you will be incredibly satisfied with the result. Moreover, you will create a lot of interest in your images, particularly now that few images get printed anymore. If you're looking for the perfect drone for yourself, or to gift someone special, we've gone through all of the options and selected our favorites.

We looked at cameras with selfie-friendly screens, wide-angle lenses, microphone inputs and great video quality, and selected the best. Submit a News Tip! Reading mode: Light Dark. Login Register. Best cameras and lenses.

All forums Printers and Printing Change forum. Started Aug 14, Discussions. Forum Threaded view. Aug 14, RandyS's gear list: RandyS's gear list. Reply to thread Reply with quote Complain.

Reply Reply with quote Reply to thread Complain. To give you the best advice, we need a little more information: 1 Are you printing this with your own printer, or are you sending it out to a lab? On the other hand: 2 If you're using your own printer, what type of printer do you have?

EDIT--ruh roh. RandyS wrote: I have a photo that i would like to enlarge and print at a size of 10x F Forum M My threads. Latest sample galleries. Tamron mm F2. Panasonic S 35mm F1. DJI Mavic 3 Cine sample gallery. Nikon Z9 pre-production sample gallery. See more galleries ». Latest in-depth reviews. Read more reviews ». Latest buying guides. Best video cameras for photographers in Best cameras for Instagram in Best drones in Best cameras for vlogging in Check out more buying guides ».

Nikon Z9 initial review. Sony a7 IV initial review. Nikon Nikkor Z mm F2. Sigma mm F Discover more challenges ». Nikon Z9 4. Popular interchangable lens cameras ».

Popular compact cameras ». Shedding some light on the sources of noise. Most bookmarked in this forum. Mobile site. Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited. Threaded view. Irridescent forks by microsurgeon from Cutlery. Advice on new printer after years with Epson Canon Pixma TS - it should be better than this.

Company support for printers? Paper profiles disappeared. Profiling monitor at D65 or D55 for printing. What every P and R owner should look out for. NAwlins Contrarian. Box Brownie.