5184 X 3888 Print Size

[Orencio Suhag]

Viewingimages on phones and tablets means that the resolution is generally pretty forgiving. However, when you actually take photos and print images big, you need to resize them. Doing so will tend to expose problems related to resolution and color.

In this day and age, even cameras on smartphones tend to produce at least 12 MP images. You should be able to print them if the image is good enough (sharp/well lit), to produce a 10 x 13 inch image natively.

With a little help from image processing software, you can improve this to some extent. There are some newer software techniques available to boost those images size, both internally from the cameras (such as high resolution mode and HDR), and externally from image processing software that uses sophisticated algorithms to boost the image size by interpolation.

A megapixel is 1 million pixels (give or take, depending on how it is calculated) for the entire image. When you have a camera with a certain number of pixels (i.e. 16 MP), that tells you how many individual pixels there are within the image. Camera sensors generally come in two flavors (3:2 or 4:3 ratios).

Megapixels just provides you with the total number of pixels. In order to actually print it, you need to figure out how big you want your print and then do some very basic math to figure out what works best for your image.

There was a time where it was thought that the resolution you needed for monitors was only 72 dpi (this has changed with technology and time), but the early number of 72 dpi stuck and made the images seem pretty large. The reality is, all you really need to know is that the total number of pixels in each direction will define your image size, not theoretical inches and dpi combined.

To make matters worse, the image resolution of your print is also dependent on how big your image is. A magazine will need a minimum of 300 dpi, whereas a billboard in a subway station may only need 40 dpi. What really matters is how far away from the image you are standing when you view it.

The problem with resizing is that each pixel in an image is discrete. In order to make bigger images to print, we need to create new pixels to fill in the gaps between the existing ones. This sounds much simpler than it is in practice.

Currently, Photoshop CC 2020 provides 7 different and discrete ways of changing the size of the image. Plus, it has an automatic setting (that selects from the other 7) to make 8 ways. However, it is limited by the content that is already there.

Although Photoshop has improved much of its algorithms for image size changes, these work reasonably well for smaller changes in size. However, significant changes in size of images can be particularly problematic.

This is a slow process and CPU intensive. That is because it uses AI to create the missing pixels to come up with a proper scaling that interpolates new pixels that work with the image. It really does work quite well. Each image can take up to 5 minutes, depending upon size.

Before I start, I always use a RAW file from the camera, not a JPEG. JPEG is a lossy format, so you never want any of your intermediate steps to use JPEG images. Even the final one should be a non-lossy image format like PSD or TIF. You can read more about file formats here.

That seems obvious, but there are ramifications of this. In general, the majority of the image data is located on the right side of the histogram. This means that to have a successful image it must be properly exposed or slightly underexposed and brought back in a raw editor.

Calibration of your monitor will ensure that the printed version of our image will be closer to the version you see on your monitor. In general, uncalibrated monitors are too bright. Using an uncalibrated monitor will result in prints that are much darker than what you see on your monitor.

Enlarging an image with a lot of noise will only increase the amount of noise present. All resizing programs will do their best to examine the underlying data of your image and use it to scale upward, but the noise on an image will only get worse.

The sharpening of your image should only happen at the end of the process of resizing an image. Sharpening is a process of looking at areas of high contrast (these are typically edges) and emphasizing the transition to make those transitions seem more distinct. If you do this early in your editing process or during resizing, the scale of the sharpening will create halos or bizarre artifacts that will be really obvious.

Larger scale resizing through Gigapixel AI takes longer, but the results are substantially better. All you need to do is to launch the application and tell it how big you want the new image to be. Press Start and go have a coffee, as it takes a little while. However, the results are really good.

Both can produce big, high-quality images, but the processes are quite different as is the look of each. I generally prefer inkjet-based, but there are lots of people who still use C-print techniques.

If you have a great image and you take the proper steps to resize the image and print it big, you will be incredibly satisfied with the result. Moreover, you will create a lot of interest in your images, particularly now that few images get printed anymore.

I take hundreds of photos. It would be a hassle and too time-consuming to change the dpi for printing or when developing photos. If the photographs' original resolution were in 180 dpi or higher, I would not need to waste time changing its dpi.

In your file above, the print size would be 72" by 54" at 72 DPI if printed full size. If you print it at 4" by 3" the DPI would automatically become 1296 DPI by 1296 DPI by your printing software. If you print it at 8" by 6" the DPI would be 648 by 648 DPI. So, the smaller the print size, the larger the DPI becomes. What the camera is reporting is if you print the image at its full size, which I doubt you would do.

In summation, you don't have to do any extra steps to change the DPI. Your printing software will calculate the DPI based on what print size that you chose to print at (your paper size in other words).

Seeking for further clarification: If I want to develop a photograph (from 6 x 4 till 16 x 12 size) or if I wish to use the 5184 x 3888 (72 dpi) image for book publication, do I need to use a software to change the dpi to 300 dpi before printing or can I just leave it as 72 dpi?

Hi and welcome to the forum:

Can you advise if you shoot in JPG or RAW, or both please?

Also what mode(s) do you use when shooting: M, P, Av, Tv etc.?

Are you doing any in-camera processing of the image?

As an initial suggestion, I would do a camera factory reset in case the settings have been changed prior to your shooting - refer to P233 of the Advanced user guide .

I had a series of PowerShot cameras, from the SX40 to the 60, but chose to relinquish the SX60 in favour of cameras with a bigger sensor. The SX40 had a 12MP 1/2.3" sensor that was able to (IMHO) to provide better noise control and resolution. At 20MP for such a small sensor, the camera is really pushing the boundaries of what the processor can handle, which accounts for the low DPI default for JPG images.

That said, looking at a couple of JPG images taken by the SX60HS, they do show a resolution of 180DPI. I am going through the Advanced User Guide trying to find out where to set that (since I no longer have the SX60, which has the same innards as the SX70 in this context.

Don't be concerned with DPI values embedded in images. They are only a hint that may be used in certain image workflows. Rest assured that if you've set your camera to capture the highest possible resolution, that resolution is indeed being captured.

Even my much OLDER Canon Powershot SX10 HS & Canon Powershot SX40 HS photos were ALL in 180 dpi. So why is Canon Powershot SX70 HS photos all in only 72 dpi? My cheaper Olympus point-and-shoot camera's 4000 x 3000 px photos are all in 312 dpi and they do look better than those Powershot SX70 HS 72 dpi photos.

PPI is useful when wanting to exactly drive certain output such as prints. As I noted in my earlier example, if you needed to make a print of 15 x 10 inches at exactly 300 PPI, you would need at least 4500 by 3000 pixels (which is less resolution that your images, so all is well here).

One very specifc scenario where PPI does drive how something is displayed is on Mac computers. Any screenshot captured prior to Retina displays were tagged with 72 PPI. Whereas screenshots captured on Macs with Retina displays are tagged with 144 PPI. This gives a hint to the display system on how large to physically make the image appear on your display.

The reality though is that while some displays may have had exactly 72 PPI in the past, actual PPI of displays now is almost anything. Software that needs to display images on a screen in a real-world size will use different values to pull that off.

Beyond these very technical scenarios, again, you don't need to concern yourself with what DPI ends up in your image metadata. If you are going to use software that relies on DPI/PPI to drive the physical size (to a print or to a screen), then adjust that value as needed.

However, photographs with higher dpi will look sharper and clearer. Because the higher the dpi, the more detail a photograph would contain which results in better quality when printed or when viewed on a computer.

That is not true. Your images have the same exact resolution period. If you are viewing those images on displays with a 1:1 ratio (i.e. 1 pixel of your display is displaying exactly 1 pixel of your image), you will not see any differences in sharpness at all.

The DPI setting that you see in the file properties for a JPG file does not mean anything until you print the photo. In your editing software or printing software, you can change the setting to suit your needs. It does not indicate a low-resolution camera. Even my Canon 5D Mark IV, a professional camera, has 72 DPI in its JPG file properties before editing. See below:

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