Help needed in understanding cropping

[fongwee]

Hi all,

This is a very basic question, am just starting out in PS. My images are shot in RAW with Oly C5050Zoom (5MP). Some of my underwater subjects are very small i.e. 1 cm only. With the help of macro lenses, I can barely fill 1/2 to 1/3 of the frame sometimes.

Thus I need to crop the image a fair bit to give it a fair composition. I would like to print them as 4R size. What I have been doing is setting the crop tool size to 4"x6" with resolution of 300ppi and crop. How do I know whether the pic would turn out pixelated before sending it for printing? Alternatively is there a smarter way to do?

Thanks for all the help

 

[ortega]

Hi all,

This is a very basic question, am just starting out in PS. My images are shot in RAW with Oly C5050Zoom (5MP). Some of my underwater subjects are very small i.e. 1 cm only. With the help of macro lenses, I can barely fill 1/2 to 1/3 of the frame sometimes.

Thus I need to crop the image a fair bit to give it a fair composition. I would like to print them as 4R size. What I have been doing is setting the crop tool size to 4"x6" with resolution of 300ppi and crop. How do I know whether the pic would turn out pixelated before sending it for printing? Alternatively is there a smarter way to do?

Thanks for all the help

4r size is 1800 px by 1200 px

crop to the above size and view at 100% to see if it is pixelated

 

[yanyewkay]

my friend ever "stole" pictures from my web page (600 X 400) to test print with a photo printer and i was amazed it turn out pretty well.. no discernable pixelations at 4R..

ortega: 4R with (1800 X 1200) is the equivalent to 6" x 4" at 300dpi.

I normally print at only 180dpi

 

[Sanver]

If you first crop the image with 6"x4" @ 300dpi, you should set zoom level to approx 30%. this will show the image on the screen with a physical size of approx 6" x 4". Now if you can see pixelization , it will apprear in the print. (Zoom percentage will depend upon your monitor resolution. Typically monitor use 72 pixels to show 1 physical inch on the screen, while Printer if printed @300dpi will use 300 pixels to print 1 physical inch).

 

[ortega]

my friend ever "stole" pictures from my web page (600 X 400) to test print with a photo printer and i was amazed it turn out pretty well.. no discernable pixelations at 4R..

ortega: 4R with (1800 X 1200) is the equivalent to 6" x 4" at 300dpi.

I normally print at only 180dpi

occupational harzard, i don't use anything below 300dpi

 

[jopel]

occupational harzard, i don't use anything below 300dpi

look like 300dpi alredi get stuck in our brain - actually the high end machine only require 240dpi. better not to confuse stick to 300dpi.

 

[fongwee]

Thanks everyone for the advice. Would try that out Still learning

 

[tunster]

For me I normally leave the dpi to empty. And set the width and height to 4" x 6"

This, Photoshop will just do a cropping without resizing the photograph.

However, if I want to send for print, I know my width and height is 1800 x 1200 x 300dpi. Then I will resize it to that IF my picture is bigger than this size.

For picture that is smaller than this after cropping, I normally use the 10% upsize method.