Photography Photography

When digital print enlargements are considered

Family-tips.info
Relationships24.info
Webmasters-xxl.com
Beautystar.info
Travel-tips.biz
 
It is about time to switch to a digital camera
Are you still using a film base camera? if you are than this article is for you. You probably know by now that you are becoming a minority as more and more people switch to digital cameras. This article lists some reasons why you should also consider making that switch. Digital cameras are not just a hyped buzz word. They have rea... Read more


 Home | Hobbies | Photography

When digital print enlargements are considered

This Photography Article is Brought To You By - Jacob Georgeson

Digital photos can be viewed on computer screens or printed on paper. Most of the time you are most likely to print on standard paper sizes like 4X6 or 5X7. Every now and then however you might want to make enlargements of some photos that you specially care about. Print enlargements quality depends on your digital camera mega pixels figure, here is how.

Every digital photo that you take with your camera has a certain resolution normally expressed as the number of pixels in the photo or sometimes as two numbers depicting the number of pixels over the X axis and the number of the Y axis (multiplying these two numbers provides the total number of pixels in the digital photo).

When you print digital photos you are really printing those digital pixels on paper. If the paper size is very big relative to the digital photo resolution the result will be a poor quality print. One of the most noticeable results of such poor quality is your ability to actually see the individual pixels on the print also known as pixelization.

So how can you determine what is the maximum print enlargement that you can make from a certain digital photo? There is no one precise answer. In addition to the actual number of pixels in the photo there are other things that can influence the answer like how many details are in the photo, what were the lighting conditions and more. Even when considering the number of pixels the answer is not precise since different people would have different views about the quality of a photo print.

A rough estimation of what comprises a good print quality is based on the pixels density or in other words the number of pixels per inch on the printed photo. This is also known as PPI (pixels per inch) and it represents the number of pixels over an axis line.

Experiments show that the following qualities are usually associated with a specific PPI number:

PPI 100 - fair to bad

PPI 200 - good

PPI 300 and up - very good

The next logical step would be to figure out how many mega pixels are needed for good quality printing on a specific paper size. Fortunately calculating this number is very easy. To do that all you need to do is to simply multiply the page length by its width in inches. The result is the number of square inches on the page. Next multiply this number by the square of the PPI number and the result is the number of pixels on the page which is the number of pixels we want our source photo to have. Here are the numbers calculated for some common sizes (for 100,200 and 300 PPI respectively):

page 4X6 0.24MP 1MP 2MP

page 5X7 0.35MP 1.5MP 3MP

page 8X10 0.8MP 3MP 7MP

page 11X14 1.5MP 6MP 14MP

page 16X20 3MP 12MP 28MP

page 20X30 6MP 24MP 54MP

This table is just an estimation of what is considered suitable number of mega pixels for different paper sizes. There are many other factors to consider when making enlargements. Experimenting with different paper sizes is the best way to go but it can be expensive. In addition sometimes what is considered poor quality pixelization can actually be a nice artistic effect which strengthen the unfortunate fact that in addition to the above calculation some common sense and experience are needed in order to match a specific digital photo to a specific paper size enlargement.

  • Photography Products on our marketplace

  • Visit photo printing for more information about this and other topics. Mr. Georgeson writes about financial and Internet subjects. Jacob Georgeson is an amateur photographer and business guru. This article can be published and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included.
    ***

  • Taking good digital photos of people faces
    Taking a really good digital photo of someone face can be very impressive. Accomplishing such high quality with face photos is hard. There are many things to consider such as shooting angle, lighting conditions, flash usage and ...
  • Do not throw away your old photo paper prints
    Many people still have large number of old fashion photo paper prints in their homes. Even if you threw away your old film camera and you are exclusively using digital there is a good chance that you still have many photos that ...
  • Portrait photos photography tips
    A large portion of everybody’s photos collection includes photos of people. There is no argument that high quality people portrait photos are impressive projecting emotions and feelings and capturing the object’s character forev...
  • The megapixels reality
    Digital camera manufacturers are fighting to have a lineup of digital cameras with the highest number of megapixels. Every few months a new model with more megapixels is introduced and the manufacturers would love you to drop yo...
  • Why do digital camera batteries run dry so fast?
    Digital cameras are useless when their batteries run dry. Battery technologies have improved a lot in the last years but batteries still have just a limited energy capacity. To get more out of your batteries you should understan...
  • Learning to read what is on your batteries for example the Sanyo 2700mAh NiMH
    Batteries are a necessity; no portable device can work without batteries. It is frustrating to be out of battery and it usually happens at the worst time. Although battery technology has evolved over the years the batteries toda...
  • © 2008 Article24.info All Rights Reserved.