Enlarge and Crop ????

Jaisus

Jaisus

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Jai
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Is it possible to enlarge a photo to the focal point and then crop out the parts you do not want and still keep a good quality Photo?

I have a D3100 and ... example, say I took a Macro/Close'up would it be possible for me to say enlarge the Photo to double and then crop out the area around the subject?

Sorry, this probably sounds like a daft question to those of you that know, but I am slightly new to Photography and wondered if I would be able to give me Photo an extra creative dimension?

Thanks in advance....

Oh and would a D3200 be better for this kind of thing... what with the large amoutn of MP??
 
You can crop a fair bit, and theres sofware around that does a fair job of enlarging, but truth be told you'll get a better quality usually by filling the frame in the first place.
 
you can enlarge a photo but you will lose detail.
I would always shoot at the best resolution you can and then crop it down
D3200 is 24MP...that's huge! 6016 x 4000 pixels
so if you crop into the centre of the image you could still have a 4MP image left easily.
which is fine for printing at A4 I think
I've printed A4 from 2-3MP images back when this was quite good for a compact camera
for example: printing out a 10 inch image at 200dpi (if that's appropriate for you) only requires 2000px across the long side

the hardest thing about macro photography is maintaining a usable depth of field
look up image stacking and DOF for marcro photography
 
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I do not actually do much in the way of cropping, I normally frame the picure properly, slightly crop it or just bin it, I was reading a post on another thread somewhere, where someone was talking of cropping images and how the D3200 was great for this as it has such a large pixel count.
I was just curious to see if I might be able to get more out of my photographya nd save some of my photos from the bin by a bit of cropping and the likes, I did wonder though if you might end up losing quality this way.
 
It really depends on how much you want to crop. Cropping does not reduce the quality of the image - It limits perhaps how big you can print it. Upsizing will reduce the quality of the image.

So I would say by all means crop out what you don't want first then decide how big you want to print it. You can get a very high print quality from an image printed at 200ppi (300ppi may be the goto figure for most but you don't need that)! You can print at a lower ppi too and still get very decent quality.

The D3100 has 4608 x 3072 pixels Even if you cropped half of them out you could still easily print a high quality 30"+ image without any need to increase the size of the image.

Here's a rough guide from Smugmug - who use Loxley in the UK
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93359#minprintres
 
okay.
well I'm happy to be corrected by quality depends on your lens, pixel resolution, printer resolution and output pixels etc.
but as long as everything is to a decent standard then you'll be fine
for example, if you have a lens that isn't too sharp but loads of pixels you can rescue the image a bit but sharpening and scaling down.
not perfect...but....

a lot of people with a sharp image can crop in quite heavily if they can afford to lose the pixels
A good example is if you take a landscape-format image of a couple in the centre of a lovely background you might, when you get to process it, prefer to have a portrait format picture to put into a frame. So you crop away the 1/3 of the image to the left, and a 1/3 of the image to the right and end up with a lot less pixels.
If you printed the image very large, then this might be a problem. Lets say poster size. But if you only print out a 9x6 or 7x5 image for a frame on the fireplace, then the quality will most likely be fine. esp if you have a 24MP image to start with
Its like a mosaic. They look great when you stand back but if you walk closer then you can see the individual tiles. you can make the tiles smaller but the image is reduced in size (for looking at things up close) or you can make them larger and have to admire the whole thing from further back
Does that help? if not...then someone else will jump in

edit: LOL Jim...we meet again :P
 
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We do indeed mate :)
All that matters is the number of pixels in the image. If after cropping you end up with 600x400 pixels - it's not going to print well at anything larger than a 6x4. I know people say you need 300ppi (but actually you don't)! Try it on decent paper with a decent printer (I use an Epson 2400 with high quality profiled papers)

If however you still have a longest edge with 2000 pixels you will be able to print this quite big. The lab's RIP should be able to resample the image (if required) and do a much better job than you can in Photoshop.
 
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