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Pixels 72 to 300

B

Bavaria

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 30, 2008
17
0
I have written a book and included several photo's. The printer would not accept and wanted all photos
at 300. I have a son who works in the computer business I sent him the photos and he changed them from 72 to 300. I rentered the photos to my book. Again refused by printer. I down loaded three programs off the net to convert pixiels. I converted each photo as instructed to 300. I follow directions. I then took the photos I converted and replaced them in the book. Again they were rejected. The printer offers no help, Pixels are not an easy application. Question once I use a converter to change the pixels how do I know if it worked. I don't know if it's 72 or 300. I asked on the web and the main answer was "Photo Shop" which I don't have. I just wantt to get my book printed and I thank you for any help you can give me.
 
You cannot upscale a picture from 72 to 300. For future reference, 72 ppi is recommended for web images, 300 ppi is recommended for print images.

You can easily scale down, but upscaling is only possible by multiplying the pixel size. This results in a very poor image.
If your program is failing to print you have may have not scaled the image as well as you believe.

The world of image manipulation is a bit finicky. One of the reasons PS pros are undervalued. When us mere mortals true to do something we must struggle. Keep up the good fight, you will win, just be prepared for frustration.

I would recommend reimaging the photos at 300 and try again. Your current 72 -> 300 path is certain to fail, and if given to a pro would only take one minute to upscale per image, but would look horrible.
 
960design said:
You cannot upscale a picture from 72 to 300. For future reference, 72 ppi is recommended for web images, 300 ppi is recommended for print images.

You can easily scale down, but upscaling is only possible by multiplying the pixel size. This results in a very poor image.
If your program is failing to print you have may have not scaled the image as well as you believe.

The world of image manipulation is a bit finicky. One of the reasons PS pros are undervalued. When us mere mortals true to do something we must struggle. Keep up the good fight, you will win, just be prepared for frustration.

I would recommend reimaging the photos at 300 and try again. Your current 72 -> 300 path is certain to fail, and if given to a pro would only take one minute to upscale per image, but would look horrible.
Click to expand...
960design said:
You cannot upscale a picture from 72 to 300. For future reference, 72 ppi is recommended for web images, 300 ppi is recommended for print images.

You can easily scale down, but upscaling is only possible by multiplying the pixel size. This results in a very poor image.
If your program is failing to print you have may have not scaled the image as well as you believe.

The world of image manipulation is a bit finicky. One of the reasons PS pros are undervalued. When us mere mortals true to do something we must struggle. Keep up the good fight, you will win, just be prepared for frustration.

I would recommend reimaging the photos at 300 and try again. Your current 72 -> 300 path is certain to fail, and if given to a pro would only take one minute to upscale per image, but would look horrible.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1522244179][/doublepost]Thank you for your excellent reply. At 80 years old I ask, "what's next? Today it's "Pixels"
 
Bavaria said:
[doublepost=1522244179][/doublepost]Thank you for your excellent reply. At 80 years old I ask, "what's next? Today it's "Pixels"
Click to expand...
Try contacting another printer that may be more helpful... I've used Lulu ( lulu.com ) to publish physical books in the past and iBooks Author ( only for self publishing, not released to store yet ).

I'm not familiar with 'Pixels'. I'm sure it is just a simple formatting issue with your publisher. They are often quite picky.

Does your publisher have a forum to ask for assistance on? Does 'pixels' have a forum?
 
Let's return to something the OP said: that he's not sure that the 72->300 conversion worked.

@Bavaria: bring the allegedly 300 dpi image up in Preview, then type command+I, and take a look at what appears on your screen. Under the "General" tab, you'll see the image's DPI. If it's 300, then the conversion worked. If not, it didn't.

As for 72->300 dpi conversions for publication, I have several times been forced to work with 72 DPI images, and have converted them to 300 with Photoshop. At the size required for books in trade paperback sizes, this has always been acceptable. It would never work in anything else (except the web).

I do free-lance book design, and one publisher gave me a 72 dpi image of a painting for the cover, could not or would not find a higher-resolution version (this was one of my Clients From Hell) so I upscaled and made the cover anyway. The nature of the image helped a lot. It's up for an award. Too bad I was so disgusted with the client that I took my name off the book.

Just to be clear: at anything much larger than 5.5" x 8.5" I don't think I could have gotten away with it.

What I'm saying is that you may be able to get away with the conversion, particularly if it's book-sized.

Anyway, bavaria, the first thing is to make sure that the 300 dpi images are really 300 dpi. The fact that your publisher keeps rejecting it suggests to me that the conversion didn't work.

Finally, I'm almost 75 myself. And still learning.
 
Last edited:
monokakata said:
Let's return to something the OP said: that he's not sure that the 72->300 conversion worked.

@Bavaria: bring the allegedly 300 dpi image up in Preview, then type command+I, and take a look at what appears on your screen. Under the "General" tab, you'll see the image's DPI. If it's 300, then the conversion worked. If not, it didn't.

As for 72->300 dpi conversions for publication, I have several times been forced to work with 72 DPI images, and have converted them to 300 with Photoshop. At the size required for books in trade paperback sizes, this has always been acceptable. It would never work in anything else (except the web).

I do free-lance book design, and one publisher gave me a 72 dpi image of a painting for the cover, could not or would not find a higher-resolution version (this was one of my Clients From Hell) so I upscaled and made the cover anyway. The nature of the image helped a lot. It's up for an award. Too bad I was so disgusted with the client that I took my name off the book.

Just to be clear: at anything much larger than 5.5" x 8.5" I don't think I could have gotten away with it.

What I'm saying is that you may be able to get away with the conversion, particularly if it's book-sized.

Anyway, bavaria, the first thing is to make sure that the 300 dpi images are really 300 dpi. The fact that your publisher keeps rejecting it suggests to me that the conversion didn't work.

Finally, I'm almost 75 myself. And still learning.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1522265098][/doublepost]I wish I was75 again, that's when the "chicks" were all over me. Now I go down to the beach, loaded, but all over 90.
I thank you so much for your information, BUT as I follow, I open a photo with Preview, then you instruct "type command+I) Remember I am much older than you..... Where do I type that in? When the photo opened I typed on the key board and the photo expanded beyond recognition. Where would General be? I have written 12 books through Createspace. I do not consider myself an author and give most of the books away.Without explanation let me say it's therapy a hobby. My intention is not to waste your time but I do need a little more help....Thank you
 
Bavaria said:
[doublepost=1522265098][/doublepost]I wish I was75 again, that's when the "chicks" were all over me. Now I go down to the beach, loaded, but all over 90.
I thank you so much for your information, BUT as I follow, I open a photo with Preview, then you instruct "type command+I) Remember I am much older than you..... Where do I type that in? When the photo opened I typed on the key board and the photo expanded beyond recognition. Where would General be? I have written 12 books through Createspace. I do not consider myself an author and give most of the books away.Without explanation let me say it's therapy a hobby. My intention is not to waste your time but I do need a little more help....Thank you
Click to expand...

Well, I think maybe you actually pressed the "+" key. "Command+I" means "Hold down the Command key and then press the I key."

A small window will pop up, and one of the tabs on that window will be labeled "General."

Try that.
 
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monokakata said:
Well, I think maybe you actually pressed the "+" key. "Command+I" means "Hold down the Command key and then press the I key."

A small window will pop up, and one of the tabs on that window will be labeled "General."

Try that.
Click to expand...
monokakata said:
Well, I think maybe you actually pressed the "+" key. "Command+I" means "Hold down the Command key and then press the I key."

A small window will pop up, and one of the tabs on that window will be labeled "General."

Try that.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1522293414][/doublepost]Thank you for your patience and reply, it indeed worked, the one I tried read300. "Your the Man"
 
Bavaria said:
[doublepost=1522293414][/doublepost]Thank you for your patience and reply, it indeed worked, the one I tried read300. "Your the Man"
Click to expand...

You're welcome. But now we have to try to figure out why Createspace (I'm assuming that's what you're using) doesn't like those images. 300 should be acceptable to them.

You wouldn't be the first person to slide in an image that wasn't what you thought it was. I'll suggest that when you ID each image as really being 300 dpi, that you rename that image with "300" somewhere in the file name. Renaming can be a very good thing.
 
@Bavaria -- I took a look at the Createspace specs.

Color and Halftone Images
Resolution: 300 DPI or higher
Format: JPEG (JPEG Photoshop compression level with quality 10 or higher), or TIFF (use JPEG or lossless compression)

It's possible that the images aren't "quality 10 or higher," because of the way they've been scaled. If that's true, and if Createspace really means what they say, then it's possible that's the reason they're being rejected.

When you got your rejection, what exactly was given as the reason?

I would be happy to pass your images through Photoshop for you, if there's no chance of getting them re-scanned or re-imaged, as 960design suggested (and thus beginning at 300 dpi).
 
Thank you, I have found theyare not all at 300 some are 72 so I am going to spend some
time working on those. Rejected because 72 pixels. I will let you know. I so much
appreciate your help.
 
When futzing with images there are several things to keep in mind:

  • PPI doesn't exist in the image file, per se. It is a note in the file's metadata that tells the page layout program how you want the pixels to be mapped to that program's concept of "inches" on the page. That program may or may not follow the instruction.
  • If you scale the image in the layout program it will not likely resample the image's pixel data and thus the resulting image on the page will have a different PPI.
  • Images have only pixels. The PPI setting is in lock step with the image dimensions listed in inches. Changing one (PPI or dimensions in inches) triggers a change in the other unless you are using a program that will resample the image's pixel data to create or destroy pixels.
The OP hasn't stated what layout app he's using. He just stated that "I rentered the photos to my book", which of course meant that he entered them into the page layout file for his book. If the images merely had the PPI changed, without resampling the actual pixels, then the final output resolution of the images would be unchanged. If the images were resampled when the PPI was changed, the new images would be ~16x the file size of the original, discounting any possible differences in compression.
 
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