Increasing Picture Resolution

[bigdavecox90]

I've got a few photos on my iPhone 5 which I am looking to upload to a photo website in order to print a canvas.

My only problem being, the sites will allow it but keep saying the picture resolution is too low so will be blurred.

My question being; is there any way I can improve the resolution of the pictures? Any software or the like?

Thanks in advance

 

[Apple fanboy]

I've got a few photos on my iPhone 5 which I am looking to upload to a photo website in order to print a canvas.

My only problem being, the sites will allow it but keep saying the picture resolution is too low so will be blurred.

My question being; is there any way I can improve the resolution of the pictures? Any software or the like?

Thanks in advance

The iPhone camera is great when viewing pictures on it. As soon as you try to increase the size (like a big canvas) it's going to get very noisy. You can reduce noise (which is your real problem) in software like Lightroom and Photoshop. But you will probably not like the results. If you want to blow up your pictures, get a real camera.

 

[bigdavecox90]

The iPhone camera is great when viewing pictures on it. As soon as you try to increase the size (like a big canvas) it's going to get very noisy. You can reduce noise (which is your real problem) in software like Lightroom and Photoshop. But you will probably not like the results. If you want to blow up your pictures, get a real camera.

Thanks buddy, so I'm guessing the real answer is; You Can't

 

[Apple fanboy]

Thanks buddy, so I'm guessing the real answer is; You Can't

Correct. Depending on the photo and canvas they use it might look okay. Depends on what look you are going for.
One of the main reasons I bought a DSLR is because when I took a good picture on my phone, even a 5" x 7" print looked awful.

 

[bigdavecox90]

Correct. Depending on the photo and canvas they use it might look okay. Depends on what look you are going for.
One of the main reasons I bought a DSLR is because when I took a good picture on my phone, even a 5" x 7" print looked awful.

Yeah that's a real shame as it was a Christmas present idea!

Thanks for your advice though.

 

[dave420]

Which camera are you using on the phone? The back camera should have a higher resolution than the front camera.

 

[C DM]

Correct. Depending on the photo and canvas they use it might look okay. Depends on what look you are going for.
One of the main reasons I bought a DSLR is because when I took a good picture on my phone, even a 5" x 7" print looked awful.

Shouldn't an 8 megapixel camera be able to accommodate more than that?

 

[Apple fanboy]

Shouldn't an 8 megapixel camera be able to accommodate more than that?

Depends on what you find acceptable. Also if you use a digital zoom or crop your images things will get worse.

 

[scotrinaf]

Shouldn't an 8 megapixel camera be able to accommodate more than that?

"8mp" is nothing more than a selling feature... The size of the chip receiving the light data & the lens quality is what determines the quality of the picture... In order to get a semi-decent picture to print at 5"x7" size, you might want to consider a tripod for your phone unless you have rock-steady hands...

 

[Mrbobb]

8 mpp sounds like not fine enough for the size of your canvas.

U can do a tile trick. Retake the photo in 4 (or more) tiles and stitch them together via software. Doesn't IOS7 has a feature like that?

 

[scotrinaf]

8 mpp sounds like not fine enough for the size of your canvas.

U can do a tile trick. Retake the photo in 4 (or more) tiles and stitch them together via software. Doesn't IOS7 has a feature like that?

I think u can turn on "HDR" and take multiple photos and it "merges" them together in the phone... Not 100% sure on that though.

 

[asleep]

Yeah that's a real shame as it was a Christmas present idea!

You might want to futz around with something like this: http://www.psykopaint.com/painter.html

Could salvage the gift idea...? (http://bit.ly/19dtc8O)

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

What specifically did they ask for? You can modify resolution in photo editing apps like Photoshop.

My old 50" LCD projection tv is one megapixel. You don't need billions of pixels to blow up a photo. The quality may not be there due to the small lens and sensor but this may be more about sending the proper file to the printer.

 

[takeshi74]

My question being; is there any way I can improve the resolution of the pictures? Any software or the like?

You can't add resolution. All you can do is avoid losing resolution (e.g. don't use zoom as stated above, use good lighting to avoid pixel oversampling, etc).

I've got a few photos on my iPhone 5 which I am looking to upload to a photo website in order to print a canvas.

If it's a canvas they're probably going to recommend a fairly high resolution and the iPhone may not be suitable. What size? What do they recommend?

"8mp" is nothing more than a selling feature... The size of the chip receiving the light data & the lens quality is what determines the quality of the picture... In order to get a semi-decent picture to print at 5"x7" size, you might want to consider a tripod for your phone unless you have rock-steady hands...

Resolution does matter when creating prints. It's not the only factor at play with image quality but there are recommended minimums for different print sizes.

 

[Mrbobb]

A printing service typically recommends that when you send a file, when printed out at its final size is 300 DPI or better, that's ideal, but if you can get it up to 200 DPI only, don't have a cow, I mean some pictures, depending on the subject don't have to be perfectly sharp.

If unable to retake pic, resize pic within photoshop or similar to the DPI they want, then use the sharpening tool to see if you can improve. It will help but is up to your eyes to decide if that's good enough.

 

[scotrinaf]

What specifically did they ask for? You can modify resolution in photo editing apps like Photoshop.

My old 50" LCD projection tv is one megapixel. You don't need billions of pixels to blow up a photo. The quality may not be there due to the small lens and sensor but this may be more about sending the proper file to the printer.

You can't add resolution. All you can do is avoid losing resolution (e.g. don't use zoom as stated above, use good lighting to avoid pixel oversampling, etc).


If it's a canvas they're probably going to recommend a fairly high resolution and the iPhone may not be suitable. What size? What do they recommend?


Resolution does matter when creating prints. It's not the only factor at play with image quality but there are recommended minimums for different print sizes.

A printing service typically recommends that when you send a file, when printed out at its final size is 300 DPI or better, that's ideal, but if you can get it up to 200 DPI only, don't have a cow, I mean some pictures, depending on the subject don't have to be perfectly sharp.

If unable to retake pic, resize pic within photoshop or similar to the DPI they want, then use the sharpening tool to see if you can improve. It will help but is up to your eyes to decide if that's good enough.

As a printer by trade, I am more than qualified to know what is acceptable print quality by industry standards. That "acceptable quality" would be native 300dpi at the size you want to print. Yes, you can enlarge the photo in Photoshop, but beware that all Photoshop is doing is semi-intelligently filling in the pixels using surrounding pixel data which is far from accurate and will create fuzzy pictures the larger they go.

It amazes me how many of our customer submit substandard (iphone users mostly) photos and then wonder why we reject them, or at their requests, we will print them out so they can reject them... iPhones are great at what they do, but they are NOT intended to provide print quality pictures.

And for the one that suggested that the 8mp is not simply a marketing ploy, go take a look at these 21mp+ point and shoot cameras that still produce cruddy photos and try telling me that again... The size of the receiving CCD and the quality of the lens are the 2 most important factors in photo quality.

I used a Casio QV3000EX early on in digital photography, it was a very expensive 3mp camera, but it took better photos than most of today's point-and-shoot cameras that tout 18mp+, why, Because of the CCD & lens quality...