Enlarging an Image

[desireerose]

I have an image that is at 500 resolution and I need to make it banner size like 3 ft by 5 ft and the enlarging process is causing alot of trouble.. Can anyone help... It loses it's clarity and gets pixilated..

[Grafixman]

I'm assuming you're using a pc. Here is the zip file for the banner. You may have to rework the colors, though. I can only approximate the color by using the eyedropper on the very grainy jpeg image you posted.

AI version.

[Thelonious]

Howdy.

Well there are two things to know here. One is that when increasing the size of an image you can uncheck resample and the file size will remain the same. If you increase the size and ask photoshop to resample then it will increase the file size and photoshop will have to add pixels. It uses bicubic interpolation to do this. The result is a somewhat blurred image due to the fact that Photoshop has to put in information that isn't really there.

There are a couple of programs that deal with this problem specifically. They claim to use fractal technology to get a better result than bicubic. However, although some people say it's very good I've checked it out and my personal opinion is that it is pretty ho hum. You can achieve adequate results using bicubic with some judicious sharpening.

Having said all that, one comes to the real question which is what resolution do you really need? This is a much more pertinant question. For high quality sheet fed coated paper or very fine home inkjet printers you will find that 300 dpi is about as big as you would want to go. In fact you can lose sharpness if you go higher.

For publication on the net you only want screen resoltion of 72 dpi. If you are printing a big banner you should talk to the people who will print it because they will advise you on how little dpi you can get away with. You also need to take into account how close it will be viewed. 3 by 5 feet is not that big. You can print that out on the average commercial inkjet printer. My experience is that you can get away with as little as 120 dpi in this instance. I've seen banners printed at 72 dpi that don't look half bad.

For starters you can uncheck the resample checkbox in the image adjust>image size command and change it from 500dpi to 120 dpi. Then have a look at the new size. That will be about as big as you can print it and be pretty sure of good quality. But you would probably be better off going for 100 dpi rather than increasing the file size. You bureau would be the best people to advise you on this.

[Thelonious]

Let's see if we can sort this out here.

OK you can open the file in photshop OK. Yes?

Do you know if it is a tiff or jpeg or gif? Go to edit>mode and see what is ticked. Is it RGB?

Next go to edit>adjust>image size. What size does it say. What resolution does it say. Make sure the resolution is set to show dots per inch and not d per cm.

Now apparently it is already showing 500 dpi. Is this correct?

Do this. Uncheck the "resample" box then change the dpi to 120. You will notice that the dimensions of the image have changed. The file size (at the top of the dialog box) will not have changed.

Write down the new image size then cancel the box. Close the image. Do not save. Report back here. We'll take it from there depending on what the new image dimensions were that you wrote down when you changed the dpi to 120.

[desireerose]

The dimensions after the change were 5.883 x 2.225 ? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
thanks for your help..

Desiree Rose

[nadeem]

Hello"
I am new to this but may be i can help.first go to image then image size & in dilog box enter 36" make sure it is in inches when you enter 36 photoshop give you other dimension if it is not right then you have to change the canvas size but later for now change the resolution to 150dpi press ok if your image size is not right then select white as a background color go to image & canvas size enter the right size press ok.I hope this will solve your problem.

[Grafixman]

I'm not sure how you guys feel about cross-posting here, since I'm mostly Corel Draw and PhotoImpact. So tell me if I'm not welcome. But it seems like the banner would better handled by a vector program. All this resizing is gonna mess up the image. And it seems simple enough to be redrawn at the right size and resolution.

[desireerose]

The image is on quality 1 at 72 resolution with out resampling.

[desireerose]

I have an image that is at 500 resolution and I need to make it banner size like 3 ft by 5 ft and the enlarging process is causing alot of trouble.. Can anyone help... It loses it's clarity and gets pixilated..

[Thelonious]

Howdy,

Yes it will need to be redone. Looks like it's been done for you.

Photoshop has vector tools as you know. If you can use the pen tool it would be very easy to draw everything except the type in photoshop.

If you can't find a type face that is close enough then it would not take too much effort to trace the current type in photoshop. You can then easily add the bevel effect as well.

More fun anyway, good luck.