photoshop help

erikadorie

Ok I have some gymnastics pictures that I would like to be zoomed in without losing the sharpness of the photo. I was shooting with a 50mm lens. Can I increase the image size then just crop the photo in photoshop? Will that do the trick? If not is there a way I can achieve the results I am looking for? Help me out! THANKS SO MUCH!

Oh and I have photoshop elements

Shay Stephens

Crop it, but I wouldn't bother resizing it. You won't gain anything from that.

jfriend

erikadorie wrote:

Ok I have some gymnastics pictures that I would like to be zoomed in without losing the sharpness of the photo. I was shooting with a 50mm lens. Can I increase the image size then just crop the photo in photoshop? Will that do the trick? If not is there a way I can achieve the results I am looking for? Help me out! THANKS SO MUCH!

Oh and I have photoshop elements

First, make a copy of the photo (keep your original, unchanged). Then, take the copy and crop it to the size and aspect ratio you want such that your subject fills most of the picture and it's the aspect ratio you want in your final output.

Then, decide what to do next based on what your output is.

If your output is a printer, then you can just tell Elements that you want to print the existing photo at 4x6 or 8x10 or whatever you are shooting for by telling Elements that's your print size. Elements and your print driver will automatically scale the reduced number of pixels in your image to match what the printer needs to achieve that size.

If your desired output is on screen (web, slideshow or email), then you have to decide if the cropped size when zoomed to 100% is OK or not. If it's OK, you're done. If you need it to be larger, then you need to increase the overall image size. I don't remember the Elements menu items exactly, but in Photoshop CS2 (and Elements might be similar), Image/Image Size. Check the [X] Constrain Proportions checkbox and enter a larger number of pixels for the height or width to the desired size. Elements will then scale up the number of pixels you had to get to your desired size. Remember, if you scale the image by a lot, Elements can't create detail in your photo that was never there so the scaling won't be perfect, but it will make the image larger. Blowing up the image like this (if you do it very much) may reduce the apparent sharpness of the image and there's not a lot you can do about it other than try to sharpen it a little bit after the resize.