Upsample before uploading?

marlinspike

I was wondering, lets say is in 302ppi I have cropped it down to to be 2280x1522 pixels. Now, 3.5 megapixels doesn't make the best large prints. Should I use bicubic resampling in PS CS to make the image 3072x2048, or am I better off just uploading it as is and leaving the upsampling to ez prints?
Thanks,
Richard

Baldy

marlinspike wrote:

I was wondering, lets say is in 302ppi I have cropped it down to to be 2280x1522 pixels. Now, 3.5 megapixels doesn't make the best large prints. Should I use bicubic resampling in PS CS to make the image 3072x2048, or am I better off just uploading it as is and leaving the upsampling to ez prints?
Thanks,
Richard

Hi Marlinspike,

My opinion shouldn't be taken as the last word because I know many photographers who upsample before uploading to smugmug, but I've never had the experience of having someone say EZ Prints didn't do a great job of upsampling.

And I've printed many 20x30s through them where I uploaded my 6 megapixel images (probably 5 after cropping), where I just couldn't see any flaws.

It's really hard to see pixels in continuous-tone images like they produce. Where you really need lots of pixels is with ink-jet prints that have to be dithered.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Baldy

marlinspike

In that case I'll just leave it to them. It's one less thing for me to do in my workflow. I asked partly because I wasn't sure if they upsampled at all.
Richard

onethumb

marlinspike wrote:

I was wondering, lets say is in 302ppi I have cropped it down to to be 2280x1522 pixels. Now, 3.5 megapixels doesn't make the best large prints. Should I use bicubic resampling in PS CS to make the image 3072x2048, or am I better off just uploading it as is and leaving the upsampling to ez prints?
Thanks,
Richard

I'm still not clear on why Photoshop limits you to bicubic, but that's no-where near the best algorithm for upsizing. There are a few that are much better, and they're freely available in lots of other products. Silly Adobe.

From what I've seen of EZPrints' resizing abilities, they must be using some nicer algorithm. It's always looked very nice.

(For what it's worth, smugmug also uses better algorithms than bicubic for our downsampling, and if we were to upsample ourselves, we would as well).

Don

mercphoto

Gf

onethumb wrote:

I'm still not clear on why Photoshop limits you to bicubic, but that's no-where near the best algorithm for upsizing.

Have you heard of or used Genuine Fractals? I've been told its very good (though I've never upsampled anything myself). Its a plug-in for PS CS.

flyingpylon

Just out of curiosity, what algorithm does smugmug use for downsampling?

Baldy

flyingpylon wrote:

Just out of curiosity, what algorithm does smugmug use for downsampling?

Hi Flyingpylon,

It's a Lanczos algorithm, which you can read more about here:

http://www.smugmug.com/help/display-quality

Thanks!
Baldy