Photoshop printing and file size

mel.b

I've just got PS5 and have put together a photo montage to fit a photo frame i have. It is 42cm w x 16.2 h.

The photos were all taken with a Canon dSLR. I resized & edited the photos to put them into the montage and then saved the whole thing. I saved it as a jpeg file' (setting maximum - 12) and i'm a little concerned about the file size as it is only 450kb. There are 8 photos in it with the largest 10cm x 16.2cm and the smallest 6.1 x 6.35.

is this file size small? It seems very small to me. I want to make sure when i get it printed that the quality is excellent. Considering that they were taken with a dSLR and none of the prints individually are huge i think it should be ok, but am still worried about the file size. I also saved it as a psd file as well which was larger (1390kb).

thanks,
mel.b

Sentineil

450kb sounds pretty reasonable for the file, although it's hard to say without knowing the image resolution.

From what I remember if you want to print it and keep it high quality you'll probably need to increase the DPI.
The DPI is the number of 'dots per inch'. By default I think this is on 72 in Photoshop. For high quality printing it's best to increase this to 300 or so.

I'm a bit rusty on this as it's been a while since I've had to deal with it so hopefully someone with more knowledge of it will help you out.

mel.b

thanks for that. I just checked and the photos are set at 72dpi. I just saved another version at 300dpi and the file size is now nearly 3000kb.

stcstc

you need to set the image to 300PPI (not dpi) or whatever the native res of the printer its being printed on

so for example on my epson large format printers its 360 PPI

Cork24

Try QuarkXpress

flanree

If you finished the montage at 72dpi you were in trouble there. Resampling it up to 300dpi and increasing the file size will only give you the same low res images at a larger file size. You would have to have made the image size of the montage 42cm w x 16.2cm at 300dpi BEFORE you started so you are working at actual print resolution. I would do it again setup this way from the start. Regarding individual photos from the camera, obviously make sure the image quality is set high on the camera (e.g. RAW etc.) and when you open an image in Photoshop to make it actual print size change the resolution in Image Size to 300 dpi but make sure the 'Resample Image' box underneath is unchecked. This way you are not increasing the file size just making it normal print size without losing resolution.

deathana

I will have to agree with flanree on this matter. You can't just size it up to 300dpi after you did the montage. It'll only make the image larger, if not reducing the quality of the image. There's a chance your montage will look slightly pixelated. I'd do it from the beginning, to preserve the original quality.

All the best

mel.b

Thanks for the advice. i had already gotten the first one printed and had noticed that a couple of the photos didnt look great (pixelated). However my measurements were a bit off, which meant I had to do it again and change the size of some of the photos and i made sure I started with everything at 300dpi first. I haven't yet had it printed, but hopefully it looks better.

Cheers,
mel.b