Can I get decent quality prints from 640x480 digital pictures?

December 20, 2004 11:41 AM

DigitalPrintFilter: Can I get decent quality prints from 640x480 digital pictures? [+]

My dad has been taking digital pictures for years. On vacation, he’ll take a hundred in a day, working on the “film is free” mentality. He really seems to enjoy trying to capture some of what he sees, as opposed to just snapshots of himself and my mom. As a [late] Chanukah gift, my brother and I want to make an album of 50 or so prints of his pictures. I was thinking of doing a mix of 8x10s and 4x6s. But when I looked through his pics, the majority of them are 640x480. Ofoto and Shutterfly say I can print 4x6s of 640x480 images. Do any of you have experience with this? Will they turn out OK, or should I limit my choices to the higher res images – 1240x1024? Will 1240x1024a be ok for 8x10s? Both companies give different recommendations for 8x10s. I’ll probably have the actual printing done at Costco or Sams, if that makes any difference to the equation. Thanks!

posted by jewishbuddha to Media & Arts (14 answers total)

you can print a few and see if you like the results. I doubt I'd be happy with prints from 640x480 and 4x6 sizes. That comes out to about 105 pixels/inch where I try to aim for more like 300, more if possible.

As a comparison, the nominal resolution of a 35mm negative is about 2000x3000. A print from 2000x3000 on 8x10 paper is about 300 pixels/inch. Of course, I've seen OK prints from 35mm on 11x17 and even in some cases 16x20.

Also, keep in mind that to some extent, as you increase the size of an image, you increase the distance away from it that you will typically view it. So, to double the size of the output you don't (always) need double the resolution. Sometimes you can get away with a bit less.
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:49 AM on December 20, 2004

Try upsizing them using stair interpolation. That is, first make it 10% bigger. Then make it another 10% bigger. Then another. If you have Photoshop, you can easily make an action for this. (Use the "smoother" upsize method.) You should at least double the size. You won't get more detail, but you can at least avoid seeing the pixels.

You want at least 150 DPI for a good image, and 200 DPI is better. More than that is generally overkill.
posted by kindall at 11:57 AM on December 20, 2004

I've done 640 by 480 with shutterfly, just to test the lower limits, and the results were surprisingly decent.
posted by Nothing at 12:21 PM on December 20, 2004

Second kindall's idea. You are probably going to want to do this yourself, as you will have some control over the process. Photoshop increases the size of an image pretty darn well. I'd grab a bunch of photo paper and some extra ink and have at it.
posted by modofo at 12:24 PM on December 20, 2004

First, I would NEVER upsize pixels. Even in Photoshop. It sounds like your dad wants to be serious about his pics and this will seriously degrade your final product. 4X6 is fine for snapshots from 640X480 as long as the ofoto app tells you it will be ok. However, for printing yourself or for real image quality, the standard is 300 to 360 DPI for inkjet printers. This means OUTPUT, not Photoshop resolution (which will default to 72) or web resolution. If you open a pic in Photoshop and want to resize it for printing, make sure you set the resolution to 300 or 360 and then DESELECT 'resample image'. Do this before you do anything to it. I would recommend your dad set his camera resolution to the highest his memory will allow. If his camera uses RAW, use that.
posted by spicynuts at 12:47 PM on December 20, 2004

Oh, and to Kindall's point that anything over 200 is overkill, this is highly debatable and dependant on 1) how big you want to be able to print your images and 2) what you feel is acceptable in terms of quality. The recommended standard for printers such as the Epson inkjets is 300 to 360 DPI for anything up to 8X11. If you are interested in art quality prints, you will notice a difference between 200 and 300 DPI, particularly if you do any tonal manipulation in Photoshop. If, however, you are happy with the kind of end result you get at your local CVS or one hour photo, then yes, kindall is correct.
posted by spicynuts at 12:51 PM on December 20, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks for the tips everyone. It sounds like the best thing to do is just test some samples of different resolutions and print sizes and see how they look. My dad isn't serious about this, which is part of why the resolution is so low, but I think if he saw nice prints, he might get more interested.
posted by jewishbuddha at 1:07 PM on December 20, 2004

I have had really great results upsizing pictures with the Lizardtech Genuine Fractals plugin, check it out. The demo lets you try it on 10 pictures.
posted by SNACKeR at 1:30 PM on December 20, 2004

Something to consider is that you can get a good quality image from poor resolution images by compositing them. That is, making a montage of several images. Each image will come out smaller but you can make an overall larger picture with good quality this way. I've done it a few times.

I wish I had a good example of this somewhere. I remember I did it for a friend once out of some very crappily scanned pics he had.
posted by RustyBrooks at 2:00 PM on December 20, 2004

For fine art prints, yes, you'll want more than 200 DPI, since they are likely to be inspected closely. However, images in most magazines are printed at resolutions equivalent to 150-200 DPI. The reason for this is that at typical viewing distances, a higher resolution would yield little or no improvement. If you're not going to put your nose up against the picture, you'll be perfectly satisfied with 150-200 DPI.

Genuine Fractals is way cool, but you get results nearly as good simply by repeated upsizing -- for free.
posted by kindall at 2:00 PM on December 20, 2004

Can I get decent quality prints from 640x480 digital pictures?

Sure you can. But your prints are going to be 2" x 1.5".

If you want to upscale, Genuine Fractals has mediocre technology that can get another 50 dpi out of the print, not much more. It'll be better than multi-step scaling, which is better than one-step scaling.

The rule of thumb with digital-analog conversions of any kind (audio, video, etc.) -- You can't create data that's not recorded.

Look at it this way: print it out at 4x6, and it'll look slightly pixelated and blurry. But who cares? The original is pixelated and blurry, too. You're certainly not going to be losing anything by printing it out.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 2:51 PM on December 20, 2004

C_D: I don't entirely agree that printing them won't make them worse. In general low-res images look better on monitors than in print. This is a combination of the fact that screens are inherently lower resolution and the fact that the contrast range on monitors is FAR superior to that of any printer. It's the same reason that slides often look better than prints, even prints of the slides.

But, yes, you have nothing to lose from trying but a few bucks.
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:12 PM on December 20, 2004

I would avoid trying to upscale the images yourself -- unless you know exactly what you're doing, you'd almost definitely get better results by letting the photo-printer automatically adjust it. They're designed to do that, y'know.

Also, it's not really necessary to send for the prints online -- many photofinishing places offer this service now. Fuji makes these kiosk machines that output 4x6" prints from digital media -- you just have to plug in a memory card or insert a CDR and you can have them printed out in just a few minutes. I know that all Walgreens locations around here (MN, Twin Cities) have them; you might want to see if you can find one. They're only 29 cents a print, so you might want to try it with a few photos and see if the results are acceptable.
posted by neckro23 at 7:35 PM on December 20, 2004

Can I get decent quality prints from 640x480 digital pictures?

Sure you can. But your prints are going to be 2" x 1.5".


That's simply not true. I've made basic print out of 640x480 and they came out fine. As works of art, no, as snapshots worthy of a scrapbook or showing to friends, yes.

I've taken photos with a camera phone and prints were passed off as 35mm. It really depends on the photograph in question.
posted by justgary at 11:56 PM on December 20, 2004