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Photoshop’s default convention is to retain the aspect ratio of the original image. These values give us plenty to work with, but they’re going to need some help if we want to print an 8×10. As you can see in the Image Size dialog box (Image > Image Size…) the original dimensions of the image are 4288 x 2848 pixels (14.293 x 9.494 inches) at 300 pixels per inch (PPI). For the sake of this article, we’ll be using this butterfly image I took a few years ago. The frames of the world come in a wide variety of other sizes, though, so knowing how to best resize those native size/resolution images to 5×7, 8×10, 11×14, etc., is a pretty important skill. If you were to try printing images straight off your camera, chances are good that you’d have no problem printing 4×6 or 8×12 with only very minor adjustments. Although it should go without saying, I’m going to say it anyway– Do not make any of these changes to your original image file. Even photographers who shoot raw eventually convert their images to JPEG before printing, as do professional print labs. Also, we will be talking about JPEG files. Having said that, though, the processes in Photoshop and Lightroom are very similar. That’s not to say that other methods are wrong– just different. Any image that’s going to print takes its last steps in Photoshop. Let me start by saying these methods are demonstrated in Photoshop, as opposed to Lightroom, because that’s my workflow. Rather than just dash off a quick reply, I decided to address it here. I received an email from a reader the other day asking me if I could clarify a few points for him on how to resize images for print. How many truly stunning images are living inside your computer, external hard drives, or even your phone? What sort of joy or sense of accomplishment are they bringing you from the deep, dark depths of their binary existence? I’m not going to rehash that whole post here (although I do encourage you to read it), nor am I here to lament the terabytes of unprinted pixels in the world. When it comes to the images we capture for ourselves, however, printing hardly ever seems to be at the top of our priority list. They’ve hired us to create those images, at least some of which almost always get printed. I’m not talking about the work we do for our clients. What we hardly every do anymore, I pointed out, is actually print them.
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I talked a bit about many of the things we do with our images these days– from editing and processing to sharing and blogging.
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Way back in September, I wrote an article about The Power of a Print.
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