Enlarging Your Digital Photos - How Big Can You Go?

Friday, January 07, 2011

It's easier than ever to capture and share photos with the popularity of digital cameras and social media channels like Facebook and Flickr. However, if you're keen to show off your favourite moments, photo printing lets you put your snap shots on display. From photo frames to poster and canvas prints, when it comes to enlarging your images, here are some things to consider.

Resolution and quality

Unlike traditional film negatives that could produce large photo prints of almost any size, digital prints are dependent on the quality and resolution of the digital image file; the general rule is the higher the resolution, the bigger you can print your images.

Here are some things to know:

- Megapixels - most compact digital camera models have resolutions of up to 5.0 megapixels (or 5 million pixels) so you should be able to capture high resolution images to make fairly large photo prints. More memory means you can store more high quality images on a single memory card.

- How large can I go? - Just how large can you go will depend on the pixels in your file. In photo printing, the recommended resolution for good quality images is 300 pixels per inch. So if you're making a 4 x 6 inch print, the image will need to be about 1200 x 1800 pixels in size. Meanwhile, a good quality poster sized A1 print will require about 7020 x 9930 pixels.

So the more pixels you have, the bigger you can make your prints.

- Get in close - in addition to making large prints, photo enlargements let you crop the image. Zoom into the background or isolate a face in a group for a stunning portrait. Most basic digital photography software programs will let you crop your images with a few simple clicks.

Many inkjet printers let you print lab quality digital prints and when combined with advanced photo editing software and a high quality digital camera, you can make stunning photo prints from your own computer. You'll find more creative photo printing ideas from Canon.