questions about ending pictures for printing

[erictan8888]

hi,

i am a newbie and have some really basic questions i hope someone can help me with. I have taken some digital pictures and i wish to send them for printing. My intent is to print them in 5R size (7 inch by 5 inch) :

1. i have resized them to 700 pixels by 500 pixels and done some bordering so that they look like postcards with those black border frames. But i noticed that the image size of the 700 by 500 pixel image is 9.722 inch by 6.944 inch (in the ratio of 7 by 5).
when the shop resize it to 5R size, will it crop away any parts?

2. i noticed that 9.722 inch by 6.944 inch (which is in the ratio of 7 by 5) has a file size of about 350kb. But if i resize it to 7 by 5 inch, the image size drops to 178kb only. Would the image quality suffer as a result of this resizing?

3. the original image is 2 MB size (5MP camera) and i want to print in 5R....
if i resize it myself to 5R at home, will the quality be the same as the shop resize it to 5R for me?

4. i printed the pics on my PC using a normal HP deskjet printer with photo quality paper and it was very low in quality.... is it due to the file size or the printer?
how to i reduce the file size and yet maintain the details?

5. when i reduce the image size, doesn't the file size automatically gets reduced also? i want to maintain the image quality but reduce the picture size: what setting on adobe do i have to do? (right now, the picture is 72 pixels per inch)..... i read on the web that it should be about 200 pixels per inch ???? if i force the photoshop to increase for me to 200 pixels per inch from 72 pixels per inch, any improvment in quality?

6. the picture looks ok on screen, but terrible when printed... why the discrepancy? is it the pixels per inch issue?

thanks

 

[willyfoo]

Try not to size it down unless you are limited by space (ie. Account Space Quota). Just crop to a 7in * 5in ratio without specifying the DPI and send the print in.

If you do need to size it down, size it down to 300dpi or min 200dpi. The current size you're specifying is 700pixels by 500 pixels = 700/7 by 500/5 = 100 dpi which is way too low.

For 300dpi: 7*300 by 5*300 = 2100 pixels by 1500 pixels
For 200dpi: 7*200 by 5*200 = 1400 pixels by 1000 pixels

 

[erictan8888]

Try not to size it down unless you are limited by space (ie. Account Space Quota). Just crop to a 7in * 5in ratio without specifying the DPI and send the print in.

If you do need to size it down, size it down to 300dpi or min 200dpi. The current size you're specifying is 700pixels by 500 pixels = 700/7 by 500/5 = 100 dpi which is way too low.

For 300dpi: 7*300 by 5*300 = 2100 pixels by 1500 pixels
For 200dpi: 7*200 by 5*200 = 1400 pixels by 1000 pixels

thanks for your reply,

but further questions:

1. i wish to crop away some parts of the original picture, but retain the original image quality: how do i do it in photoshop?

2. i notice that when i open up the original picture in photoshop, they have 72 pixels/inch setting.... so when i crop maybe the certre part of my picture, do i have to do anything , like specifying the pixels per inch to 300 per inch or something like that?

3. in short, what do i have to do to print the image out on the picture as it looks on the screen ?

4. i crop to 6 by 4 inches and set the resolution to 300PPI....

by right, the file size should be 2.16MB because 1800 pixels by 1200 pixels
gives a 2.16 MB file size. But i noticed that my file size is only 1.38 MB... why? would my image quality suffer ?

thanks

 

[ortega]

Always shoot at the biggest size and at the best quality that your camera can, this is so that you always have that something extra to work with in Photoshop, be it cropping or editing. From my limited knowledge, the recomended minimum size in pixels for a 4R print is 1024 x 768. Why don't you start a new image with the size of 5" x 7" at 300dpi and then copy and paste you image into this new 5 x 7" image, you can then see if your picture is big enough to crop. Cheers and good luck.