How can I crop an old photo without it pixellating?

Andysnap

Andysnap

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Andy Grant
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Hi folks,

I have found a disc with my old school photo on (the whole school not just me) and want to crop it to myself and two mates. however its only about 640kb and it pixellates too much. Is there any way of cropping that avoids this problem?

Cheers

Andy
 
Anyone?

Andy
 
There are ways of interpolating images, to give them higher resolution, but if the detail isn't there, the detail isn't there!

I've seen an example of a photo which was about 500px wide blown up and papered onto a barbers wall. It was an old style photo though so wasn't sharp/full of detail to begin with... but this isn't really what you're after :(
 
Elements 6 but I have a copy of CS3 which I can load up if necessary.

Andy
 
What is the size of the image in pixels? 640kb could give a reasonable image.

Go into elements and read the pixel size. Is it 800x600 or 1800x1200 or something like that.

I'm guessing the number will be small though and as noted above, you can increase the image size. If you want to send it to me, I could give it a try with the best software on the market Genuine Fractals. no guarantees though :)

What size do you want to print it?
 
Gordon Scott said:
Make your crop.... then increase the the image size; this will make the interpolation algorithms kick in. Increase by 5 or 10 times or more and you should see a big improvement. I checked on CS4 and it works OK.
Click to expand...

Tried this and its a definite improvement on my first attempt. Thanks Gordon.

EOS_JD said:
What is the size of the image in pixels? 640kb could give a reasonable image.

Go into elements and read the pixel size. Is it 800x600 or 1800x1200 or something like that.

I'm guessing the number will be small though and as noted above, you can increase the image size. If you want to send it to me, I could give it a try with the best software on the market Genuine Fractals. no guarantees though :)

What size do you want to print it?
Click to expand...

Its 2562 wide x 1512 high in the original and when I crop it becomes 373 x 219. I was thinking only upto A4 really, although A3 would be good if possible.

Andy
 
Your cropping is the problem!

When you crop make sure the ppi value is blank

Your image is fine as it is and doesn't even really need any resizing! In fact i'll tell you A3 is easily possible.

Lets say a3 IS roughly 11.7 x 16.5
2562/16.5 = 155PPI
1512/11.7 = 129PPI

You will need to crop a bit for it to fit an A3 and it will priont at 129ppi (I'd suggest resizing to 2970 x 2106 which would allow you to print at 180ppi.

this is easily possible in PsE
 
To add when you reduce the number of pixels you are throwing away all the detail in the image and although that's fine fior emailing or web sized images, that is not god when it comes to printing!
 
Another point, cropping generally means reducing the size, but you can also use the crop tool to increase the size of the image or to just recompose. When printing an image, or even saving an image, be careful not to throw away all that detail
 
Thanks Jim, very kind of you to find the time to help. I'll have a go at this in a bit and let you know the results.

Cheers

Andy
 
No problem. Are you sending the image out or printing yourself?
 
I think EOSJD is getting a little confused between cropping and re-sizing. Cropping leaves the pixel density the same, but discards parts of the picture. Re-sizing looses information when reducing and interpolates when increasing size which will give better results than viewing the original image. You may find that your printer/printer software does a good job of interpolating the image as well... but it will not help for viewing on a screen.
 
Gordon Scott said:
I think EOSJD is getting a little confused between cropping and re-sizing. Cropping leaves the pixel density the same, but discards parts of the picture. Re-sizing looses information when reducing and interpolates when increasing size which will give better results than viewing the original image. You may find that your printer/printer software does a good job of interpolating the image as well... but it will not help for viewing on a screen.
Click to expand...
I'm not confused at all - I thought my wording may have been wrong but I don't see where I was?

When I said crop I was meaning that the dimensions of the image (ratio)does not fit onto an A3 natively so some of the image would need to be cropped - not necessarily resized.

The OP is the one who "cropped" and resized the image.

Cropping means generally reducing the size of the file - not necessarily the image resizing which is different
 
EOS_JD said:
I'm not confused at all - I thought my wording may have been wrong but I don't see where I was?

When I said crop I was meaning that the dimensions of the image (ratio)does not fit onto an A3 natively so some of the image would need to be cropped - not necessarily resized.

The OP is the one who "cropped" and resized the image.

Cropping means generally reducing the size of the file - not necessarily the image resizing which is different
Click to expand...

OK... but the OP wants him and two mates picked out of a school photo; so he needs to crop everybody else out one way or another.
 
That's a different story :) But you don't generally "crop" people out of an image - easier to clone them out - although even that is difficult.
 
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