Blow them up!!!!

[gregulator]

So I posted in the programming forum about this, but I am working on a site where users upload images to print in large format (think 6'x1' size). What is the best way to keep images small (ie upload times from taking forever), but resolution good? I tried a demo of Genuine Fractals and it is ok, but not as good as I would have hoped. Sure I will never be able to take grandma's pic at 1024x768 and make a full size image a photo quality, but is there a good compromise? Vector art would be nice, but most users will be beginners and just upload jpg, or other common files. Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Fardringle]

If you are going to be printing 6' x 1' posters, you want as much resolution in the photo as possible or the printed poster will look blotchy and grainy. To obtain/keep the resolutions needed, you are going to have larger files. There's really nothing you can do about it unless you sacrifice image quality to create smaller files.

Vector images can scale well since they aren't really images but instructions for the vector program to create an image scaled to the desired size. Photographs (BMP, JPG, TIFF, etc.) just don't work that way since they contain color, shading, and detail information for each pixel of the image separately.

 

[Munky]

You also need to consider what's the target viewing distance for the image. For example a billboard is huge, but because it's viewed from farther away, it doesn't need such high resolution proportionate to its size.