Hi,

I have been looking at all the great layouts in the gallery, and I could see that a lot of them use mainly one photo.
The issue I have when I try and create a layout with one main photo is the size of the photo.
The resolution of my page is 300 dpi, however I realised that the resolution of my photos is only 72 dpi.
As a result when I drag them to my layout and try and resize them - the result is a distorted photo
How does everyone else overcome this problem ? Do you change the setting of your camera to take photos in higher resolution ?

Thanks,
Dana

I always take my photo's on the highest resolution setting possible - yes, it takes more space on the memory card, but what if one day I take THE photo and want to enlarge it really big? Hehe!

I have had a few photo's where I've cropped them heaps and after enlarging them they're really pixely - therefore, I sometimes us a Gaussian blur to make them look dreamy, which can be very effective, but it depends on the photo and the look you want. Personal choice really.

Annette

Dana:

I'm a film photographer from way back. I seldom resize my images. Almost always I crop. I need to see demensions (i.e. 8x10, 5x7) probably because that is what I am used to. I can't say I fully understand pixels and file sizes but rather have come to tolerate these terms.

I usually shoot with an Olympus E-20 (5MP). I almost always use the highest resolution/file size. I download the images off the Compact Flash card and bring them up in PhotoShop. When I look at file/image size this is what I get.

Image file names are something like this: P1234567
Pixel File Size 14.1M
2560 X 1920 pixels
35.556 inches X 26.667 inches
at 72 dpi

The first thing I do after downloading is to ARCHIVE my original images. I basically treat each original image as film photographers treat negatives. I burn the original images to a CD. I never change the original image. If I mess up an image during the creative process I can always revert back to the original.

Next if I want an 8x10 I CROP at 8 inches X 10 inches @ 300 dpi because I will want to print this image. Sometime after I make the crop and usually before I do any other PhotoShop work I SAVE AS and give the image a new name. If I am working on a project that has a series of images in the layout (i.e. Fire Training Montage) I'll save using the last four numbers of the original image file, i.e. ftm-4567 or a-4567.

So if I have a series of images and I've cropped them 3"X2" @300 dpi I'll need to do less adjustment when I drag them into the background which is 8"X10" @300dpi. If I need to change the size of the image to make it look good in the LO I'll usually use TRANSFORM-SCALE and just stretch (Shift+Click and drag from a corner) to what I find pleasing. If that gives me an image that looks pixelated I'll go back to my original image and recrop.

If you make changes to the original image and just SAVE then you have lost the original image. What you have left are the changes and if you don't like what you've done you're stuck with it. That's why I always archive the originals.

YES! Never take web-photos (Lo quality) unless you ONLY Plan on putting on the web (who knows that in advance?) Change your camera settings to HI or FINE jpg, and RAW if your camera can handle it (mind does RAW, but it's a real pain, takes forever, but if you're experienced you might want to check out the RAW setting).

These are archival photos, make sure you use the highest quality you can. Have fun!

__________________
Emma the Pal
GALLERY Web Page

Ok my Camera at i't's best takes a picture that when downloaded into Photoshop has attributes of :

2048 x 1536 with a resolution of 180.

Since Dragging this on to a 12 X 12 300dpi project would make the image smaller I would usually just increase the dpi of the image prior to dragging it over to the layout. It is hardly noticeable.

Still the others are right...always take photos at the highest quality you can. It is better to resize down or crop then to blowup.