Photos not Crisp and Clear

gamedaymd

Hi- I'm a newbie person here and to photography- I need to put together a sports gallery on SmugMug. I have photographers sending me large sized pics (i.e 4304 x 2582). Right off the camera. The pics they are sending are not crisp and clear at that size. They tend to be blurry, grainy. If I resize them down, they begin to look a lot better and look fine for the web. But, are these pics that can't be used for a gallery (for printing purposes)? Do the pics I put up need to be crisp and clear at the original file size or can I just resize them and put them up as smaller pics?

Photosbychuck

gamedaymd wrote:

Hi- I'm a newbie person here and to photography- I need to put together a sports gallery on SmugMug. I have photographers sending me large sized pics (i.e 4304 x 2582). Right off the camera. The pics they are sending are not crisp and clear at that size. They tend to be blurry, grainy. If I resize them down, they begin to look a lot better and look fine for the web. But, are these pics that can't be used for a gallery (for printing purposes)? Do the pics I put up need to be crisp and clear at the original file size or can I just resize them and put them up as smaller pics?

You can resize the pictures if you want but for printing you need them to be clear with a sharp focus point. Some times you may want a soft focus or blurred part of the shot. It just depends on what you are trying to show in the picture. Example: Alot of photographers when shooting race cars like the car to be in sharp focus but have the shutter speed low enough so the tires will have some blur.
I hope this helps you and welcome to dgrin & smugmug.

Take Care,
Charles

clcoronios

Hi gamedaymd -
Welcome.

I'm a bit confused about your situation/what exactly you're trying to accomplish. As I understand it, you are putting a sports gallery up on SM - but NOT with your own photos.

Q1: So others are sending you photos. Are these 'others' professionals or just folks with snapshots?

Q2: Since SM is online, I'm not sure what print quality has to do with anything. If you size the image at 400 - 600 pixels at 72 dpi, they should load quickly and show nicely online. Or do you intend that this gallery will also be offering prints of these photos?

If you're planning to offer prints from this gallery, you'd need to make sure that everything you offer is print quality up to at least 8x10. Because I'm not at home to check, I'm not sure how large (in inches) a 2000x4000 p image at 72 dpi would be. What comes out of my camera is approx. 40x60 inches. Once up-rezzed to 300 dpi, it becomes smaller - approx. 8x12. Then I examine it to see if it's an acceptable print quality.

Hope that helps a bit.
Carol