Crop and Resize in Photoshop

gman33

Hi All

I am just getting into shooting local sports and all I hear is to crop, crop, crop. This is fine and I like this idea of cutting out the clutter.
My question is, if I crop the picture down, what is the best way to increase the image size so that it can be printed at a larger print size?

I am using CS3

Thanks for the help with the newb question

Ed

OsirisPhoto

Hi Ed,

There are a few different software packages that will increase the image size by resampling and adding pixels.. photoshop being one of them. There's a load of info on re-sizing images both on Dgrin and elsewhere. One important point is that you can get huge images from standard cameras if your viewers are at a reasonable distance.

Best thing to do is get the image cropped right first time, though. Don't know about you, but I still shoot to make sure I get the subject(s) in the frame, even if it means having to do some serious cropping later.. but best practice is to zoom in to frame the subject properly. Of course, you need to have an idea of what you want from the shot to begin with, and a good lens helps.

jfriend

gman33 wrote:

Hi All

I am just getting into shooting local sports and all I hear is to crop, crop, crop. This is fine and I like this idea of cutting out the clutter.
My question is, if I crop the picture down, what is the best way to increase the image size so that it can be printed at a larger print size?

I am using CS3

Thanks for the help with the newb question

Ed

I would amend the "crop, crop, crop" and say that for sports shots you want to "shoot tight, shoot tight, shoot tight".

When I compare my sports shots from 3 years ago with those from today, the single thing that makes my shots from now better than before is that I get in much closer. I often don't even bother taking the shot if I'm not in reasonably close. Besides giving you a nice large view of the subject, getting in tighter also significant enhances the performance of the auto-focus system in most cameras and gives you more blurred background, both of which can enhance the perceived and real sharpness of your shots. In the second half of the soccer season I'm now shooting, I'm even spending some of my time shooting just the upper body to try to really capture faces and competitive determination.

That said, if you haven't shot that tight, many sports shots are improved by cropping to enlarge the view of the important aspects of the subject. In many cases, you can just crop like you normally would and print whatever size you want (within limits) directly from that crop without doing anything special. The software you use to print and the print driver will take of scaling the image to the print size you asked for. I have some imags that started out as 12MP images, got cropped down to 5MP and then I printed enlargements directly from the 5MP image with no problems.

Now, if you crop down to a 1MP image and want to print an 11x14, you may be better served by doing some upsizing yourself before printing just so you can control the process directly. Your results with that big an enlargement from that small an original will be compromised in any case, but you might as well make it as good as you can. There are many different opinions on how to best upsize (add pixels). I just use Photoshop and select the Bicubic Smoother algorithm, resize the image and then make sure the image is appropriately sharpened after the conversion.

gman33

Thank you guys for all of the info. I like the tight look but it is sometimes hard with the little guys as they are all bunched together. I will have to do some research on the resize. I just want to make sure that if I crop, and the parents want a larger print, than they will be able to do so.

thanks again
Ed

jfriend

gman33 wrote:

Thank you guys for all of the info. I like the tight look but it is sometimes hard with the little guys as they are all bunched together. I will have to do some research on the resize. I just want to make sure that if I crop, and the parents want a larger print, than they will be able to do so.

thanks again
Ed

See this chart for Smugmug's recommendation on the minimum pixels for a given print size.

gman33

jfriend wrote:

See this chart for Smugmug's recommendation on the minimum pixels for a given print size.

Thank you very much John for the link!!!!

Ed

DirtRacin

Thanks for the link!

jfriend wrote:

See this chart for Smugmug's recommendation on the minimum pixels for a given print size.