Comments on: Not just another free photo question (well, OK, just another free photo question)

Question: Not just another free photo question (well, OK, just another free photo question)

blueshammer — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:02:44 -0800

I'm looking for a very high-rez photo of a cloudy sky, something along these lines. I need to enlarge it to about 2'x1', and I understand that any raw digital image is likely to have to be manipulated to become that large, but if I can find a source with few or no compression artifacts, I can live with the rest. But I'm certain clip art sites, pay or free, aren't going to quite have it (and I'm big on free). Are there atmospheric sites, government or academic, that might have some really large sky photos?

By: JJ86

JJ86 — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:15:46 -0800

The NOAA has photo archives with some good high-res images. You can enlarge normal high-res images to that size without too many problems. Obviously if you look closely, there will be visible pixels but typically the larger the picture, the less closely that people look at them.

By: twiggy

twiggy — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:16:16 -0800

google is actually helpful in this case...

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:28:30 -0800

stock.xchng - free high-res stock photos. Just search for "sky" and you're in business.

By: ab3

ab3 — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:36:14 -0800

are you certain that clipart sites won't have it? istockphoto, for one, is cheap - under $5 for high res images, usually - and has thousands of photos like this

and this

and stock.xchng is free, and has things like this:

... what are you looking for, specifically, that you think you can't find on one of those?

By: ab3

ab3 — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 08:41:02 -0800

heh. shoulda' previewed. i guess i don't make much of a mental distinction between "clipart" sites and "stock photography" sites. but yeah, clipart sites might not work very well. oh, and btw, i was just doing searches for "clouds" and "dark clouds"...

By: caddis

caddis — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 09:30:37 -0800

Do you have a camera?

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 09:31:49 -0800

You may not need as much resolution as you think. How are you going to print it this large? Most large-scale printers actually have very low resolution: walk up close to a billboard and you can see the dots plainly.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 09:59:04 -0800

Search the Flickr database for CC licenced photos.

By: pinto

pinto — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 11:17:18 -0800

clouds are an easy sample to clone stamp your way into a larger file

By: blueshammer

blueshammer — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 12:18:24 -0800

This is for a boardgame board. I don't need high-rez -- I don't mind pixels and whatnot, or at least I don't mind smoothing and filtering -- but when I blow up a 1200 pixel jpg, the compression artifacts just make it look terrible.

I'll investigate these sources, thanks.

By: twiggy

twiggy — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 13:00:11 -0800

blueshammer: I would have a professional company do the resizing.. they can do a better job sometimes of maintaining the quality at large physical sizes even with not so huge digital photos.

Even Shutterfly did wonders when I wanted to print a 19"x12" poster of a 2 megapixel photo.

By: notsnot

notsnot — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 16:51:40 -0800

if you'd like, you can use this
If you sell the game, I just want credit. the big copy is here.

By: blaneyphoto

blaneyphoto — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 18:13:34 -0800

I'll second the iStockphoto suggestion... but I'm clearly biased. Here's a search for 12megapixel or larger photos of a Cloudy Sky