11x14 photo size.. camera settings

neastguy

in order to get a clear pic at 11x14" what does the picture size have to be set at on the camera? ex.1024x768 I have no clue, but I'd like to take some pics and order them at that size and have them look nice..any other tips:dunno ... thanks...

Art Scott

Depends on the camera...is a 1mp, 3mp or 10.2mp.....but I have always felt that one should always use the BEST resolutuion setting a camera has...then you chould have room to work with the files and not worry so much if you need to crop a little here and there....now if your shoot stuff for ebay that is different and I move into the fine jpg setting there......but for anythoing that has the possiblity of ever being printed, I suggest you alsways set the camera on its best resolution and if it shoots in raw, then use raw...if it doesn't do raw but has tiff...then that is the next best thing (large files tho)....
Hope this helps

Jeffro

neastguy wrote:

in order to get a clear pic at 11x14" what does the picture size have to be set at on the camera? ex.1024x768 I have no clue, but I'd like to take some pics and order them at that size and have them look nice..any other tips ... thanks...

Here are some suggestions from "another" on-line printing service...
4x6=480x640 / 5x7=768x1024 / 8x10=1024x1536 /16x20 and up=1200x1600 minimum suggested file sizes.

I would then recommend, at a minimumm, using the 1200x1600 settings, bigger if you got it, for the 11x14.

As for RAW vs JPEG that debate is like Canon vs Nikon. Some shoot RAW always, some never, and some both. I use RAW for really important things, where I know I won't mind spending time at the PC, but otherwise I shoot at jpeg large fine, and set the in camera setting to my liking. I figure, hey I never had a darkroom before, so what makes me better than the camera now?

Shay Stephens

If you want to target 300dpi or as close to it as you can get in print, shoot full resolution and crop to the correct aspect ratio. Don't reduce your camera resolution.

A 300dpi 11x14 print will be 3300x4200

A still good looking 150dpi 11x14 print would be 1650x2100

neastguy

Shay Stephens wrote:

If you want to target 300dpi or as close to it as you can get in print, shoot full resolution and crop to the correct aspect ratio. Don't reduce your camera resolution.

A 300dpi 11x14 print will be 3300x4200

A still good looking 150dpi 11x14 print would be 1650x2100

Image Quality: Sets JPEG compression to Fine, Normal, or Basic. (Oddly, the "HI" option is missing here, it's only available in the capture-mode menu.)
Image Size: Sets image resolution to 2,270 x 1,704; 2,048 x 1,536; 1,600 x 1,200; 1,280 x 960; 1,024 x 768; or 640 x 480 pixels.

above are my camera specs.coolpic4300.. it looks like I can shoot a tif in 2270x1704.. is it best to shoot everything in a tif and crop down to those aspect ratios or is that the debate, just use fine jpeg and then crop....? sorry, I'm new to this....

Shay Stephens

TIF images on cameras are overly bloated for what you get quality wise. The best mix of quality and file size is the largest finest jpg any camera offers.

Only a RAW capture is worth the extra file size, but I have never found TIF worth a thing.

Now one caveat. Some camera say they can record an XXX x YYY sized image, but they don't have that resolution natively. So only record at the native resolution the camera sensor has. Using interpolated recording is also a waste of file size since you can do the same thing in your image editor later.

neastguy wrote:

Image Quality: Sets JPEG compression to Fine, Normal, or Basic. (Oddly, the "HI" option is missing here, it's only available in the capture-mode menu.)
Image Size: Sets image resolution to 2,270 x 1,704; 2,048 x 1,536; 1,600 x 1,200; 1,280 x 960; 1,024 x 768; or 640 x 480 pixels.

above are my camera specs.coolpic4300.. it looks like I can shoot a tif in 2270x1704.. is it best to shoot everything in a tif and crop down to those aspect ratios or is that the debate, just use fine jpeg and then crop....? sorry, I'm new to this....

All of those image sizes listed above are the same aspect ratio (e.g. 4:3). Which is the same aspect ratio of a computer screen (i.e. 4 units wide x 3 units high). Wide screen TV has an aspect ratio of 16:9 and a 4x6 print has an aspect ratio of 3:2.

gneufeld

posting photos
Somewhat related to this thread.

How do I reduce the size of a photo to post it without losing image quality? 150k and 800 max dimension. It seems to be trial and error in photoshop and digital photo pro.

Thanks, Glenn

Shay Stephens

gneufeld wrote:

Somewhat related to this thread.

How do I reduce the size of a photo to post it without losing image quality? 150k and 800 max dimension. It seems to be trial and error in photoshop and digital photo pro.

Thanks, Glenn

What I do most of the time is resize the image and then apply unsharp mask of 75% - 100%, .5 radius, 0 threshold. That usually gets the job done on an already sharp image. If the image is a little blurry, using a larger radius can help

gneufeld

Shay Stephens wrote:

What I do most of the time is resize the image and then apply unsharp mask of 75% - 100%, .5 radius, 0 threshold. That usually gets the job done on an already sharp image. If the image is a little blurry, using a larger radius can help

Thanks for your quick reply. When I resize an image to 800 it is still about 350 to 400 k. Is there a quick way to get it to fit the dimension and size requirements?

Glenn

Shay Stephens

gneufeld wrote:

Thanks for your quick reply. When I resize an image to 800 it is still about 350 to 400 k. Is there a quick way to get it to fit the dimension and size requirements?

Glenn

Resize it to 800 pixels wide and hit it with unsharp mask, then "save for web" at 60-70 quality