How to shrink an image

Zet

Hi,

Is there a way to crop an image so that it can't be printed larger than a certain size? For example, If I crop and save an image to a size 4x6 I can still make larger prints, it won't fit on larger canvases though. Do I also need to change the resolution size? I want to be able to give people an image that they can not use to print larger than a 4x6 print. Thanks for the help!

Peano

Zet wrote: »

I want to be able to give people an image that they can not use to print larger than a 4x6 print.

It can't be done. For an image to be suitable for print, the resolution you give them should be 300 ppi. But if that's the case, they can always enlarge the image without resampling and print it at a lower resolution -- for example, 4x6 at 300 ppi can be enlarged to 6x9 at 200 ppi, or 8x12 at 150 ppi. In many cases, those lower resolutions will print fine. They can also enlarge the image you give them and resample it to increase the resolution.

Zet

Thank you for your reply! I spent a lot of time reading about this last night and found out it really can not be done.

puzzledpaul

Whilst you can't stop people doing what they want with an image file, I'd suggest that another option could be to give them a file whose pixel dimensions would only produce a 6x4 print at a v. low resolution eg 100ppi

So, ignoring resolution, and staying with pixel dimensions, this'd equate to a 6 (x100) x 4(x100) or 600 x400 pixel file.

200ppi resolution would give them a 3 x 2 print and 150ppi a 4x 2.66 print.

You can't stop them uprezing, but you're not giving them much to start with ... and you've still got the option of giving them an even smaller (pixel dimn) file ... say 300 x 200

(I took a similar approach with pic sizes (720x480 typically) on my site, btw ... after looking around at other sites to see what other ppl use.

pp

Zet

Thank you Paul!