Jazzy's tips to improve your photos when printed
You cannot get a quality "Giclée" canvas print from a cellphone snapshot!
A Megapixel is ...
a unit of measurement which represents one million pixels — those tiny dots of colour which make up an image.
Practically speaking, Megapixels represent the resolution, or size and quality, of an image. The higher the number of Megapixels a camera can capture, the higher quality the images it produces will be and the bigger the picture can be blown up.
3 Megapixels
How big can I print from my 3 Megapixel camera?
High-quality you can print 7 x 5 inches (6.82"x5.12" @ 300 ppi) or 10 x 7 if you don’t want the
highest quality (200ppi)
With some pictures you might even scrape in at 14"x10" (150ppi) but we don't recommend it. See the chart!
How Big Can I Print From My Digital Camera File?
Many people are confused by resolution, and the way it affects image quality. This is particularly true when digital cameras are involved, because large prints have to be made at lower dots per inch (dpi) than the "standard" of 300 dpi.
For instance, a typical question may be: “I have a 6 megapixel camera. How big of a print can I make from a 3008 by 2000 pixel file at 300 dpi?”
The answer with a calculator
If you have 3008 by 2000 pixels and choose to print at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch, it’s simply a matter of maths .... dividing the number of pixels on each side by 300. In this case, dividing 3008 by 300 gives you the width of 10.027", and dividing 2000 by 300 delivers a height of 6.667", (so you end up with a print that is 10.027 inches by 6.667 inches).
But this is not the answer most people want. What the photographer wants to know is, “How large can I print my digital camera file, and still have it look good?"
The answer another way
You can get an exact answer by opening a digital camera file in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro or the free programme (The GIMP), then bringing up the image size dialog. Here we see the “size” of the file expressed in two different ways.
Let’s look at the Pixel Dimensions. In this box, we see that the file is 3008 pixels wide by 2000 pixels tall. These are absolute pixels. Every pixel on this 3008x2000 page corresponds to a pixel generated by the digital camera from its sensor. In the case of a digital camera file, the number of pixels we have is limited by the size of the sensor.
Therefore, if we only have a 6-megapixel sensor and set it to capture at full resolution, we only have six million pixels in our file. This gives us the resolution--the actual number of pixels contained in the file.
Change how we pack them in
So the number of actual pixels we have is fixed, but we can change how tightly they are packed into a print, which is the relative resolution. This is displayed within the Document Size box inside the Image Size dialog.
The Document Size box gives us options for Width, Height, and Resolution. These are relative to our pixel dimensions. The easiest way to understand this is by typing in different resolutions and watching what happens to the width and height in the Document Size box.
If you type in 400 dpi, it makes a 7.52" by 5" image (see illustration below).
Now, as you type in different resolutions, watch the Pixel Dimensions and notice that these do not change. This is the key to understanding how big you can print.
Tightly together or loosely apart
We have a fixed number of pixels, but these can be arranged together very tightly or on the opposite extreme, very loosely. The larger we print an image, the further we have to spread out these pixels.
It’s like having a room to paint and trying to use a litre of paint when 4 litres would be better. By having less paint it will be a thin coat, and probably won’t look very good. Instead, if we choose the 4 litre size, we can get great coverage.
That’s the question the photographer really wanted to know: How far can I spread the pixels out, and still make a good looking print?
There is no simple answer to this question because it depends on what printer you are using and the material you are printing on.