Not sure if this has been asked.
A newspaper wants to print a photo of mine. They want it in 300 dpi. However, I took the photo at 72 dpi. Can I covert it to 300 dpi without losing any quality of the photo?
Thanks
if you have photoshop
image > image size > untick the ‘resample image’ box > change the dpi
the image data (amount of pixels) remains exactly the same, but now the dpi will be suitable for dumb-*** print people who don’t understand the basic fundamentals of digital imagery 
lol, i sense a little bitterness towards print people.
That is not going to really do you any good. While it will work okay for little increases it will not with a difference of 238dpi.
Being that it is newspaper print, it is probably not going to be crisp. So if you send in a low res image it’s probably going to print worse.
Simple method to increase the resolution.
- Print your picture.
- Scan it at 300dpi.
- Edit as necessary. (color correction, levels… sharpness…)
- Save and send it to the newspaper.
Also, AD, if you took the photo and left it at a decent size after taking it down off your digital camera, you can increase the resolution first to 300 and then reduce down the size of the picture for the printing.
Usually that gives satisfactory results – Datura
Hmm Sorry but I have to say that IMHO that’s very poor advice.
A digital photo in a camera is measured in pixels. Now whether you set dpi to 72 or 300 the pixel dimensions remain the same e.g let’s say a typical 6mp is 2848 x 2136
at 72 dpi its 2848 x 2136
if you change the dpi without resampling its still 2848 x 2136
The image quality hasn’t changed. The image is bit for bit identical
By changing the dpi to 300 without resampling, you can now print it at its natural size without any reprocessing or quality loss at all.
A 6mp pic of 2848 x 2136 can be printed at 9" x 7" … unless it’s for the front page it’s unlikely you’d need bigger than that.
The same can’t be said if however you print it out, then scan it back in you’re introducing 2 stages of image degradation, noise increase, loss of dynamic range…
True. I for some reason assumed it was 72 and the dimensions were less about 5X3… assuming the size of the image either to be large or small can result in incorrect input.
Use PhotoZoom Professional and zoom your image using 300dpi. that should work!
grab a camera, take another picture with the highest resolution. change the dpi in photoshop.
But isn’t it a moot point unless the image has enough pixels to warrant 300dpi?
What is his pixels?
^ Exactly
Converting the image from 72dpi to 300dpi will reduce the overall size of the image to just over 1/18 of the original size. If the image is big enough to be reduced by that much then there is no problem. If reducing the image by that much makes it too small then the image can’t be converted.
Isn’t 300dpi overkill for a newspaper print anyway? I always thought something in the neighborhood of 180-200dpi was max for newspapers to handle dot gain.
seriously!
I mean 300dpi is for max quality print jobs at the highest possible ink saturation
3000dpi is a bit much for a newspaper. Who knows what they were thinking when they told you that.
irfanview is a little powerful tool for resize/resample. as luc said 300 DPI si too much for a newspaper.