h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why do they all save at 72dpi and how do I stop this?

Even with a 10megapixel camera they all saved that low, although the ones sent to me from a 20mpixel camera did save properly.

I ask because printing them out they all look crap, and they were all rejected to print on banners that I'm having done to promote my business. My phone camera is 5megapixels so why are they all saving so low res??

Question, Mina: If you look at the originals on disk, what size are they? (compared with the 'display' version).
Maybe there's an option somewhere, carefully hidden?

They aren't on a disc, they're on a camera, my phone there's no properties, and the 'details' basically say 'this photo is on your phone'.

I'm having banners printed for a trade fair for my business at the mo and the pictures are being done at 1400dpi, the guy doing them wont look at anything below 300 as they'll be blurry & pixelated.

Mpixels doesn't really mean a lot, you can get good or bad pics on a 5 or a 20 mp camera. Phone cameras tend to save on a low res to get the most pics per storage capacity. You either need to set your phone to a high res setting or get photos taken with a camera that can deal with high res images. For banner size, you need pretty high res pics. A big memory card is essential either way.

For my pics, hubby (the photo bloke!) got 8 images on an 8GB card in his DSLR. That'd be around 2500 normal snaps.

There were a couple of pics I couldn't get so I downloaded from a stock photo site. They normally require you to sign up for a month via paypal but give a 7 day free trial. You can download a few images every day at a high resolution and then you can cancel the paypal instruction before the payment terms come in - maybe something for you to look at?

It's not just the phone camera though, it's a DSLR - they were fine on his computer, it's just when I downloaded them they saved so low on my computer, without me having a choice.

I guess I'm asking what setting on my computer do I change? The photos with my phone weren't taken to be used in this way, but the DSLR ones were!

On a side note, let me get this off my chest.

I AM NEVER USING THIS COMPANY AGAIN!! They waited 5 weeks to tell me my photos weren't good enough. I could have had a proper photo shoot booked in that time.

Sorry, had to vent that. They also conned me into paying first, so I can't even withold some of the payment.

Have you 'installed' the camera on your computer?

I don't know?

I always found installation to be a retrograde step. I always treat the camera as an external disk drive and the images as normal files. My newest camera has a habit of saving thumbnail (low res) pictures as well as the full image - maybe when you upload the images you are getting the wrong set?

Aha that explains it, thanks! No, it's attached to the computer as an external drive, and I don't even go in the folder with the thumbnails - although I will check next time that I am in the right folder.

I basically select, copy then paste into the folder on the computer. I assumed that was where the downgrade was happening, and wondering if there was a setting I need to change.

hi Mina

i think this is an old problem - not made any easier by the different ways in which computers, printers (eg, PC printers) and Printers (eg. Print Service businesses) expect to use the images

The only *directly* meaningful number(s), relating to size, associated with an image are its width & height in pixels (from which the file size follows, depending on the compression method used)

The 'dpi' value is usually an arbitrary value (which you may be able to alter) which only really comes into play when you wish to get a hard-copy of the image on a printer - the software will use the 'dpi' value, dividing it into, say, the width in pixels to determine how wide (in inches) the image will be on the printed page

if a photo is 2048 pixels wide, and its dpi value has been set to 100 for printing, then the printed image will be 2.05 inches wide

PC software usually allows you to choose what 'dpi' value you want the printer to use when it prints the image - sometimes instead of altering the dpi value, the software allows you to scale the image in %, or to choose an actual finished-size for the printed output

you should find that the pixel width/height of your photos is unchanged when transferring between camera and PC - usually, the only time a PC attempts to reduce a photo size automatically, is when you right-click on an image file and ask to 'Send to email contact' (or similar) - but even then it usually asks if you want to keep the photos the original size, or reduce them (so that the recipient can see most of the photo in the email, without having to scroll massively in both directions) - this reduction affects the actual pixel W & H


i've had a couple of fruitless discussions with Print Service folks in the past, trying to establish what (pixel) size i need to provide on images for posters and they were only able to talk in terms of dpi - this wasn't very helpful as the dpi value is only a multiplier, not an actual size

in the end, i stored the images/photos as a PDF document containing the image in the highest resolution i had - and i left it up to them to use the scaling function inherent in PDF documents if they needed to reduce the image to a smaller 'size'

i empathise with your frustration & hope that this info above may have been some help!