If I take 1600 by 1200 res pics with my new oly 2020 and try to output them using corel photo paint 7 to my epson photo 700 the print preview shows them to be huge, over 14". So at this point I need to adjust down to 4x6 0r 5x7 or 8x10, the point being the orig needs to be manipulated to print. Should I be using a lower res on camera for these size prints, or am I doing something wrong....It seems that there is no benefit in having a high resolution camera if you just resize it in a software program unless you need to enlarge just part of the original. Any help would be greatly appreciated, resp to jbarberz@aol.com thanks

-- joe barber (jbarberz@aol.com), February 21, 2000

Answers

The printed size really has nothing to do with the number of pixels in the image. Pixels don't have any real size.

Any decent image editing program will let you re-scale the image to any resolution or image-size you like. Take your 1600x1200 pixels for instance: In order to print at 14", the number of pixels per inch (ppi) must be set to something like 114ppi. In order to reduce that to, say, 10.7" to fit an A4 sheet, you must change the number of ppi to 150. The total number of pixels stays the same, but now they're squashed into a smaller area to fit the paper.

I don't know Corel PhotoPaint, but I'll bet that it's got a re-sizing menu hidden away somewhere. Read the help menu carefully, it should tell you how to re-size and change the resolution of your images somewhere.

Just remember Pixels have no size.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), February 22, 2000.

Go to the menu bar and find the "image size" or "resize " dropdown, you can then set your actual print size to whatever you'd like. A 1600x1200 digicam will give you an 8x10 at 160ppi. You can then use Genuine Fractals Plugin to crank the image up and make excellent 8x10's at 320ppi, send that to your inkjet with some decent paper and your done.

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), February 24, 2000.