increasing pixels??

[The Vector Doctor]

still not convinced. Unless they cropped those images severely, each one is way too small. Even the earliest 1mp cameras have larger photos than this

A 1mp camera will take a photo of about 800x600 or so

I don't have an ipad so maybe they changed a setting. This is all a moot point but I was just wondering how they were sending you such small photos

 

[Bobby H]

Oof! We get this kind of stuff all the time at my work place. A lot of people think because the photo is "DIGITAL" that somehow makes it "perfect" for any use. They think a forum avatar sized bitmap image of a photo or logo is just great since it is digital.

When I start talking to them about "native resolution" in photographs, or the merits of using vector-based art in logos their eyes start to glass over in confusion. Too many details.

But then that's just it with "DIY Design." When the customer wants to do the design himself he's also obligated to deal with all the details that go into doing the job right. It never works out that way unfortunately. They want the creative glory without all the heavy lifting. It's creative happy camp where everyone is an artist and everyone gets a gold star. They just dig a deep hole for a real designer to fill and fix.

 

[Jen Goodwin]

Yeah, they supposedly took them with the ipad2. She couldn't figure out how to get them off the ipad to the computer so she just e-mailed them to herself, which would automatically turn them to 72dpi. I was hoping they were a higher resolution on the ipad, but she just e-mailed me and told me she figured it out how to download them, but they are still only 72dpi.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Just FYI I believe all cameras shoot at 72dpi or ppi. The resolution is not the issue. The number of pixels in width is what you are looking for. RAW software on better digital cameras just do the conversion for you. So they appear to be 300 when in reality they shoot at 72dpi

Maybe her email software is reducing the resolution. I posted a similar story here a few weeks ago. Someone was sending me very low res images and the customer insisted it was taken with a 10mp camera. What happened is their email service (yahoo) was making them low res by downsampling to make the email smaller

 

[The Vector Doctor]

One more note. On my iphone when I email photos it asks if I want to send a small, medium, large and actual size. I am sure the ipad is similar. Maybe they picked small

 

[Jen Goodwin]

I see what you are saying, the ones I got were 960 x 720...but if the ones she downloaded are bigger....maybe I have a chance?!? How big are we talking that they would need to be to be usable?
I e-mailed her to ask the size.

 

[Jen Goodwin]

We got it done using 72 dpi pix taken with an Ipad2 and a little help from photoshop. No more pixels and one happy customer! Just wanted to share! Thanks for all your help!!

 

[J Hill Designs]

not bad!

 

[ucmj22]

We got it done using 72 dpi pix taken with an Ipad2 and a little help from photoshop. No more pixels and one happy customer! Just wanted to share! Thanks for all your help!!

Nice job! I still would have told them to go pound sand.

 

[Jen Goodwin]

LOL...they are great customers...I'd never tell them to go pound sand...plus last night putting it up, they provided the beer. Good custahmiz!!!
He gave me the go ahead with the pixelated one...so they were so happy to see what I had done to it.

 

[Bill Modzel]

Going back to Jen's comment on the watercolor filter. It will indeed do magic on some low resolution photos at times. It's a good tool to remember.

 

[rushworks graphics]

what exactly did you do to it in PS??

looks good! do you know what part of spain it is in? just i lived in many parts of spain for several years so would be interested to know where it is.

thanks

 

[sfr table hockey]

Do you mind sharing a bit of final info on how you got this to print so nice.

After you pieced your photo together, what was the size of the photo at the 72 dpi? (ie: 28" x 8" ???)

I have a wall mural to try to do with an old (looks to be a copy of a print pieced together) of the town taken from an airplane in 1957. The 16" x 20" print is mounted on a board from who know when and is beat up. I have scanned it at 900 dpi but I am not sure its any better than at 600 or 300 dpi. I have done a test print on a section where if it were printed at about 100" x 80" and from 10 feet its not bad.

Does yours look the same where close up its blurred but back a bit looks fine?

Thanks for any help. You did well getting that to look that good.

 

[Jen Goodwin]

I took the actual photos that he sent me (72 dpi) into Flexi and fit them together so they lined up, increased them to 47" x 12.75" tipped the photos so I could get a good slice out out of the middle of it and exported those as an EPS. Opened them in Illustrator, converted so I could open in PS. Then I opened them in photoshop and changed the resolution to 350dpi and at that res it was 75" x 17". There I cropped it to my size, added sky and grass as needed with my clone tool, played around with the levels to get a good deep color to it. Changed the coloring so it all matched (each photo was a different color!) using various tools including the burn, dodge and airbrush tools. At that point, printed a sample and it was insanely pixelated. Took it back into PS, played around with the watercolor tool and can't quite remember why I reverted back to the regular photo and then I actually ended up using a gaussian blur to eliminate the pixels and on this particular photo, it worked like a charm. The water color was pretty good too, as I remember - I think I went with the blur tool because it still retained it's 'photo' feel. The final print was printed at 20' x 5' at 150dpi and up on the wall, it doesn't look blurred at all, it really looks great! That was my biggest concern...it looks far better than a bunch of little squares!!

 

[Jen Goodwin]

do you know what part of spain it is in? just i lived in many parts of spain for several years so would be interested to know where it is.

In the countryside of Macael, Almeria, Spain...where ever that is! LOL. They said it was absolutely beautiful. The quarry is Cosentino - they make Silestone. I think I deserve new countertops. HA!

 

[The Vector Doctor]

i think the important part to point out and where I doubted you was the original image in your second post. The image you attached was only about 1-2 inches long but the customer in fact did send you better images. You were limited by the size of the allowed attachments here at signs101

I think some people are wrongly assuming you used that tiny image in your first attachment

 

[Jen Goodwin]

I see Eric! Yeah, I was limited as to what I could attach here. His photos were 72 dpi at 960 x 720. All said and done, it's true that the Ipad2 camera is not your friend.

 

[rushworks graphics]

well you did a great job, well done.

yeah, i know almeria very well.......have relatives(on the wifes side) living there.....very nice area.

 

[signswi]

I took the actual photos that he sent me (72 dpi) into Flexi and fit them together so they lined up, increased them to 47" x 12.75" tipped the photos so I could get a good slice out out of the middle of it and exported those as an EPS. Opened them in Illustrator, converted so I could open in PS. Then I opened them in photoshop and changed the resolution to 350dpi and at that res it was 75" x 17". There I cropped it to my size, added sky and grass as needed with my clone tool, played around with the levels to get a good deep color to it. Changed the coloring so it all matched (each photo was a different color!) using various tools including the burn, dodge and airbrush tools. At that point, printed a sample and it was insanely pixelated. Took it back into PS, played around with the watercolor tool and can't quite remember why I reverted back to the regular photo and then I actually ended up using a gaussian blur to eliminate the pixels and on this particular photo, it worked like a charm. The water color was pretty good too, as I remember - I think I went with the blur tool because it still retained it's 'photo' feel. The final print was printed at 20' x 5' at 150dpi and up on the wall, it doesn't look blurred at all, it really looks great! That was my biggest concern...it looks far better than a bunch of little squares!!

All in photoshop:

a) optional: if you need to unify the color temps in multiple images use match color under image>adjustments
b) use file>automate>photomerge to create panorama
c) optional: fix errors with clone stamp/patch/healing tools
d) scale up in photoshop using perfect photo plugin (all sign shops should have this)
e) go to town with your filter experimentation if perfect photo didn't quite give you what you were after despite best efforts with texture and sharpen options

 

[rushworks graphics]

isn't there a graphics programe out there called perfect resize? its supposed to be very good at photo enlargement without much or any loss.

i have no idea how good it is, but i'm sure some on here either have it or have tried it....