dumb newbia a1 question: what resolution to get 4x6 prints

[peter r.]

any ideas? if i have to crop in elements, ok--i'm learning that too

thanks--love the new a1!

[The_Other_One]

I don't have an A1, but I feel I could speak for any digital camera owner. Take pictures at a high or the best quality, then work from there. This way, you can do some minor cropping if needed without looseing any real qualty when you shink.

[amazingthailand]

I would also suggest you get a copy of Qimage - great printing program.

They have a trial you can download at

www.ddisoftware.com

It takes all the pain out of printing photos. And, yes I agree with the previous poster. Shoot at highest quality and work from there.

Declan

[plg3]

Double dittos. Agree with the previous posters.

1. Shoot in the highest resolution, consistent with the mission to be performed. If you think you'd like to get a well croped picture of a new baby, close friend, or just a nice scenic view, then shoot in your camera's best quality mode (in JPEG.) If you're trying to maximize the number of pictures on a memory card, then drop the picture resolution a notch or two. Usually just one notch down yieds a significant increase in number of pictures on a card. To be perfectly honest, I don't use TIFF or RAW (not available on my Oly) but I think you can get outstanding pictures in highest quality JPEG.

2. Consider printing from Qimage. I use Photoshop Elements 2 for correcting / editing my shots, but I do all my home printing from Qimage. It's great for up- or down-sizing. You can select any of the standard photo sizes or you manually adjust the size as well as crop (without affecting your original image.) The program will also show you how much print you're losing if you print in an aspect ratio other than what the picture file contains; you can adjust this if you desire.

Enjoy your new A-1 and take lots of pictures!

Paul in NoVA
C-730 B-300 WCON-07

[srvsd]

As for what others have said, I couldn't agree more--shoot with the highest resolution possible. I've never heard a complaint that a picture was too sharp.

Depending on the printer/paper, you can always select 4 x 6 paper in the "page setup" menu and then choose to "scale to fit media" in the "print preview" menu selection in Elements. I haven't had any problems with my Epson printing a various sizes.

[Optiker]

Peter...lots of good advice here already.

If you want to learn a little about this rewsolution business, you might try Wayne Fulton'sw web standard site on scanning - A few Scanning Tips.

http://www.scantips.com/

for the home page. Then down the right-hand side to "Scannong 1-1 - The Basics." Start at the beginning and dead as much as you care to. Wayne's first 5 or 6 sections will go a long way towards helping you understand what's going on. It targets scanning, but applies as well to digital cameras, though the common terminology in scanners tends to be DPi and with digital cameras, total number of pixels or pixel dimensions of the image.

After the first several sections, drop down to "Photo Resolution." Good introductory tutorial. Browse around the site...lots of good stuff.

[peter r.]

thanks for all the tips folks--i really appreciate it, and will check that stuff out