Cropping and enlarging photos

J_B

We want to get a printed splash-back for the kitchen
About 1550x750mm


We have some photos that are between 4 and 10 MB in .jpg format


If all I need to do is to crop these to get the aspect right, can I simply do this in MS Paint without losing quality, or do I need a specialist program?

Neil_Jones

You can do it on paint but it'll be far easier on paint.net.

Tom99

I find MS Office Picture Manager very easy to use.

that

If you cut the photo too much and end up with too little detail to enlarge, the edges look jaggeder etc, then try http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/

esuhl

I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure Paint in Windows 7 re-encodes the JPEG, losing some of the original quality.


You might need to find a program that works directly on the JPEG file without transcoding it.

stragglebod

Before you go any further make sure that the photos are actually good enough when viewed at that size. You'll need a serious serious lot of pixels. And sharp, well focused pixels.


You've already lost some of the image quality converting them to jpeg - do you not have the raw bitmap images?


For this kind of editing I'd recommend Gimp, it's free and will give you lots of control over how you save your images, plus lots of filters that might help you improve them.

J_B

stragglebod wrote: »

You've already lost some of the image quality converting them to jpeg - do you not have the raw bitmap images?

They are not our photos, they belong to a 'hobby photographer' and we have offered to purchase them off her.

Tiexen

J_B wrote: »

We want to get a printed splash-back for the kitchen
About 1550x750mm


We have some photos that are between 4 and 10 MB in .jpg format


If all I need to do is to crop these to get the aspect right, can I simply do this in MS Paint without losing quality, or do I need a specialist program?

Give the original uncropped photo to whever you are using to print them, as well as your cropped/resized version.

Heedtheadvice

I assume that you will have several photos covering the space 1550x750 rather than one or two.
If you want high quality graphics on your splashback, as indicated above, you need to preserve image quality so that they appear good when seen close up to them.


Given your original jpeg file sizes (4 to 10MB and assuming good sharp shots in colour) each picture might just be good enough (for this purpose) to display close to A3 size. Probably not if it was a picture on your living room wall! Best you try out each one by printing a quarter frame of the image at A4 size if you have a reasonable printer to get an indication of quality and then select/adjust the number of pictures you use accordingly. Printer setttings often allow you to enlarge an image (in this case a cropped quarter of what you want) up to A4 automatically.


You do not need to enlarge your image (once you are happy with it) as the printer will do that. Great advice too from Tiexan. It allows your printer to do any
adjustments from your purchased originals and maybe at higher quality too!


As far as the app to do the cropping GIMP is very good (as posted above) but is possibly over complicated for you to use.
Office picture manager is as described above and would do the basics if you have access to it.
You should avoid a prog that works on a bitmap (the file type conversion losses mentioned above) from memory Paint works like that. (Can anybody confirm for latest versions?)
There are many a prog out there and free. One such that is good is Photoscape, free to download and use, has all the facilities you are likely to need, easy to use, graphical interface, you can do sufficient picture corrections etc.


For presentation and serious/professional work Gimp, photoshop and others/better would be required but it's horses for courses!
Raw type of files again let photographers get the absolute best out of the shots (tweaks to the image) but full quality jpegs files with high pixel counts should be more than adequate for your and most final photographic uses. They (jpeg image files) rely on conversion of the camera sensor pixels to the common jpeg file type that is done by the camera manufacturer, in a way that is better than many would try to replicate from the raw type! It is likely that your printer wants a jpeg file(s) for printing but you should check that out too and the required spec for the images!

that

posterazor is designed to make large posters (to building size) from photos, but if there is not enough detail, and/or you are too close it still could look pants

Rasterbator is another bit of s/w, but the above is better
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=Rasterbation

you could be better off using software that will convert your picture into scaleable vectors, rather than just bigger dots, but suggest you try both ways

A new contender that I had no knowledge of https://www.vectorizer.io/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2xknX3k6FY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V36wnbl9fc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC4rI2dYd-4
increase resolution for non vector scalling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC4GRRCQPWE

Geodark

Ask them if they have the raw pics and use them instead.