Blowing up photos

[FreeUps]

<<Serious photoshop amateur. I'm trying to blow up a photo to at least triple the original size. I dunno the process for doing this without pixelation occurring. I need to vectorize the image i take it? That seems to be the word on the street. I have no clue how to vectorize! Dunno if I can do it with photoshop or if I need another program, then can import it to PS afterwords. I also have graphic converter on my Mac, and it has a vecotrize option, but it doesnt seem to be working for me. Any suggestions/tutorials for blowing up my images? Trying to get mother a nice sized print for a special occassion, so I'm in a hurry! :thumb

[click]

You'd want to vectorize only if your image were composed of entirely simple shapes. It's the last thing you'd ever want to do when dealing with photo images. For enlarging photo images, use Genuine Fractals. It's a third-party PhotoShop plug-in. Just search Google for info.

[pathfinder]

<<Serious photoshop amateur. I'm trying to blow up a photo to at least triple the original size. I dunno the process for doing this without pixelation occurring. I need to vectorize the image i take it? That seems to be the word on the street. I have no clue how to vectorize! Dunno if I can do it with photoshop or if I need another program, then can import it to PS afterwords. I also have graphic converter on my Mac, and it has a vecotrize option, but it doesnt seem to be working for me. Any suggestions/tutorials for blowing up my images? Trying to get mother a nice sized print for a special occassion, so I'm in a hurry! :thumb
Genuine Fractals is a nice program - but give the image size action in Photoshop a chance.

Click "Image" - "Image size" and look at the drop down box - You will probably have to change the image dimensions from inches or centimeters to percentage which then should read 100% for both horizontal and vertical. Increase one of these - either horizontal or vertical - to 110% The other will change automatically, then click OK.

Now repeat the whole process as many times as you need to get the image size you need - By limiting increases in size to 10% for each iteration you can enlarge things substantially with less degradation of your image than if you had gone directly to the larger size. Try this and see how it works - you may be surprised - it may be all you need.
Bear in mind that any program that enlarges an image will not increase the quality of the image or increase resolution that was not there in the first place. But if you start with a good image frequently you can make a poster out of it by this means.

Vectorzing may work for graphic art images but will not fair well with detailed photos I suspect.

Show us your work when you are done so that we may all learn from your experience and praise your resultshttp://www.dgrin.com/images/icons/lickout.gif

[FreeUps]

Its kinda weird cause I figured that I could blow up any size photo to a decent sized poster. Never done this before, but I figured there was no minimum resolution needed for the printing technology we pack these days. The people I'm doing it through have good prices, but the only problem is that theres a minimum resolution for each certain size that you want. I think the minimum for the poster size I'm going for, (around 20x30 inches) is something very large like 4800Xwhatever-the-hell-the-height-was pixels. I shoot everything at 640x480 to save space on my camera, and I think an 8x10 print is the largest possibility for my 640 reso choice. "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills." - Mugatu

Didnt think I had to shoot at the largest resolution my cam has, simply to get a large print. :wxwax :huh :scratch Dunno... Maybe I'll just try another company. Looks like moms gonna have to wait. Thanks a lot though guys. I'll give all of the above a shot, hopefully something good comes out. I'll keep ya posted :deal

[ian408]

Didnt think I had to shoot at the largest resolution my cam has, simply to get a large print. :wxwax :huh :scratch Dunno... Maybe I'll just try another company. Looks like moms gonna have to wait. Thanks a lot though guys. I'll give all of the above a shot, hopefully something good comes out. I'll keep ya posted :deal
Shooting at the highest resolution and shrinking always works. It's very
difficult to go the other way.

Using PS to enlarge the image in tiny chunks is probably your best bet. To
see why (starting with a copy of the original), try enlarging in 10% chunks
then with another copy, enlarge the image in one or two operations.

Depending what you want to use the image for, if you can find a plotter
(like an HP850), you might be able to get away with doing it yourself and
just printing the resulting file. Kinko's?

Good luck.

Ian