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| *SoulEyes Photography>>>Digital Photography |
Digital picture resolutions? |
I am new to digital photography and I've been wondering: If my camera can take up to 7mp pictures (and I decide to take pictures at 7mp resolution), but I only plan to print them at a 4x6 size, would I need to crop the pictures in order for them to print properly at that size? Someone told me that it is a waste of the camera to take pictures using less than the maximum resolution available, but for the most part I don't think I would print anything larger than 4x6. Cropping actually has nothing to do with the resolution of the camera. Photo printers (either photo printing services or home photo printers) automatically resize photos to fit on a 4x6 piece of photo paper. Now, if your digital file doesn't have the same 3:2 aspect ratio of a 4x6 print (either because your digital camera's sensor has a different aspect ratio or you cropped your photo using software), you may find the photo processor has to crop slightly to make it fit correctly. For most modern cameras, cropping is not something you have to worry about unless you actually want to change the composition of the photo. As for using the highest resolution setting for the camera, yes, it's true, you can print a perfectly fine 4x6 photo with about a 2 or 3 megapixel image. But the only downside of using the highest resolution setting is that it takes up more space on your memory card and hard drive. Given the plummeting price of storage (both memory cards and hard drives), I would recommend that you always save the highest resolution. With a photo editing program you can reduce the size with or without cropping, and you can set the resolution to a smaller, but adequate size for printout. Then you can sharpen it, to fix the quality loss due to shrinking the photo to 4x6 size. Let me warn you however. Consider also saving the photo file full size on a CD or DVD for the future. Any picture that you keep may be one that you want in a bigger size sometime in the future. Consider digital technology advancements. You may want a slide show on a big screen for a presentation at a wedding or funeral someday. Digital screens are becoming more demanding. You can't get a 800x600 image to fill a screen anymore, though it makes a nice 4x6 photo at 150 pixels per inch. |
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