Best place to go to get digital pic enlarged??

TedKelly

Hello all,

After getting hooked on this site the last 4-6 weeks, I've finally decided to register and seek your help. Question basically "does exactly what it says on the tin" really. I'm not mad into photography or anything but I did take a pic a couple of years ago that I'm fond of and would like to get a fairly large frame for it. It's a pic taken from a horse race on the beach. Was wondering a) where to get it done b) will I still be able to get good quality from a digital photo being enlarged and c) will it be expensive.

Thanks for your help in advance and please go easy on me as I'm not too knowledgable on pixels and the likes (and I am only new:) )

Ted.

rymus

welcome to boards. The size you can go to will all depend on the size of the image now and the quality it was taken at. If you want, post the image here and you'll get an accurate answer as to how big it can be printed and what kind of quality you'll expect.

TedKelly

Cheers for the welcome Rymus. Here's the pic.

rymus

If that's the full size pic (30k), I very much doubt you'd even get a quality 6x4 out of it. I'm open to correction though. Was it taken with a camera phone by any chance?

TedKelly

No, it was taken with a hp photosmart 945 camera, (which I presume is fairly decent). As I said I know nuttin about image sizes and that but I reckon that's probably full size 'cos I only have it saved on disc now. Well thanks anyway for your help rymus.

rymus

that camera should be capable alright.. Maybe the camera is set to save images in low resolution? Give a few more people a chance to look at the image you attached to see what they think. I can't see you getting anything more than a 6x4 out of it anyway.

TedKelly

cheers for that! Well at least I got my first posts out of the way even if I don't manage to get what I want......:)

daedalus2097

Picture's blocked for me in work here But the amount of detail you want will never be available in that size of a file. A 6x4 might look alright if it was resampled in Photoshop or something, but you'll never be happy with it at A4 size or bigger. Are you sure you don't have a bigger version of the file stored anywhere? Maybe it's stored in a separate library by the software that came with the camera? As a rule I've always left my cameras on the highest possible setting - if they need reducing after then there are plenty of ways to go about it while still keeping the original "master" for future work.

The Colour Copy Centre in a basement on Pembroke Street, just off Leeson Street, is quite good for doing colour prints at any size. They seem to know what they're doing and will often do it in front of you.

TedKelly

bump

rymus

I'd say the above gives a pretty conclusive answer Ted. Put it down to a learning experience. Camera up to full res for any future shots.

TedKelly

will do rymus, cheers.

City-Exile

Ted, there are some questions above, that you need to answer.
Did you ever get a print of this?
What steps did you take to get the image from the camera onto a disk?

Zillah

That image is useless for printing unfortunately. Way too small. I'd be suprised if even a 6 x 4 looked alright.

TedKelly

City-Exile wrote:

Ted, there are some questions above, that you need to answer.
Did you ever get a print of this?
What steps did you take to get the image from the camera onto a disk?

I did print an A4 copy of the photo for my brother and although I'm no expert, the quality seems good. Would I be better off taking that copy somewhere to be enlarged?? As for getting the image from camera to disk, I just used the software that came with the camera to download to my pc and then saved from pc to disk. Sorry if this is not the correct information, but I'm not very technical when it comes to this sort of thing. Cheers!

City-Exile

If you've got a decent A4 copy, you might be able to get a high resolution scan from that and then print off another copy for yourself.
Take it to a photo centre and ask their advice.

As for cost, I'm not sure but they'll tell you, before you commit to anything.

TedKelly

Thanks very much....