Poor quality photos and photos for sending and printing

[Emerana]

Well I guess the title doesnt really explain too well. I have some poor quality images (around 65kb). They were sent via the internet from a foreign country so there is no way to get higher quality (no worries, I have the rights to them). I was wondering if there was any way to improve the quality so that they could be printed 4x6 any better? From a photo lab they come back very blurry.

My second question is that I have my giant files that I must resize and send (along with these small files) via the internet to be printed at a photo lab in Guatemala (4x6). They dont need to be professional quality, but I would still like them to look nice. What should I do to resize them?

 

[reg]

What is the resolution? 65k sounds very, very very small, far too small for printing anything.

edit: If they already came back blurry there's not a whole lot you can do AFAIK.

 

[Emerana]

blurry will have to do. what should I resize my photos to? (the ones I have taken that I am sending?)

 

[RacePhoto]

blurry will have to do. what should I resize my photos to? (the ones I have taken that I am sending?)

Two quick possibilities.

The photos that were sent to you, were low resolution, because that's what the camera took. They aren't going to get better and may be full size already? You could try using Irfanview (FREE) and the Shift-U for automatic color correction, which sometimes helps and sometimes makes them worse. No problem, it's easy to UNDO.

There's also a sharpen command SHIFT-S which may or may not help.

If the originals are fuzzy and small, sharpening may do nothing. But since it's free, why not try.

Use the SAVE AS command when you're done, so you don't ruin the originals.

As for making your files smaller size for whatever reason you need to do that, you can open the originals and save with higher compression, which for one save, makes them smaller and gives you much better quality than reducing the size and trying to make them bigger again, on the receiving end.

Example, if it's Irfanview, you can save 100-90-80-Etc. So try 30 or 40 and see how small they get. Same thing. SAVE AS so you don't lose the originals. If it's Adobe, the quality goes from 1 to 12, so you can pick 3 or 4 and see how that works out.

This is compressing the file, not making a smaller image.

Good Luck!

 

[Bifurcator]

Genuine Fractal 5

Alien Skin Blow Up

Are two I've used. They work pretty good mostly!

 

[Emerana]

Thanks race, I never realized what that pop up box was for in PS...I am still just learning it.

Thanks bif. I am demoing on1. I am going to send a few samples to be printed. *fingers crossed*