Rule-Breaking Resizing for Poster-Sized Prints

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Rule-Breaking Resizing for Poster-Sized Prints

This is an excerpt from Scott Kelby's "The Photoshop CS2 book for digital photographers"

Rule-Breaking Resizing for Poster-Sized Prints
This is a resizing technique I learned from my friend (and world-famous nature photographer) Vincent Versace. His poster-sized prints (24x36") always look so sharp and crisp but we're both shooting with the same 6-megapixel camera so I had to ask him his secret. I figured he was using some scaling plug-in, but he said he does the whole thing in Photoshop. My thanks to Vinny for sharing his simple, yet brilliant technique with me, so I could share it with you.

Step One
Open the photo you want to resize, then go under the Image menu and choose Image Size. By the way, in Photoshop CS2 there's now finally a keyboard shortcut to get to the Image Size dialog: Command-Option-I (PC: Control-Alt-I).

Step Two
Type in the dimensions you want as your final print size. My original width for my 6-megapixel image is just a hair over 10", so when I type 36" for the Width, the Height field will automatically adjust to around 24" (the Width and Height are linked proportionally by default adjust one and the other adjusts in kind). Of course, not all images scale perfectly, so depending on how many megapixels your camera is, you may not be able to get exactly 24" (and in fact, you may not want to go that big, but if you do, you might need to enter more than 36" to make your Height reach 24", and then you can go back and crop your Width down to 36" [see the "Cropping to a Specific Size" technique earlier in this chapter]).

Step Three
Once your size is in place, you'll need to adjust your resolution upward, so go to the Resolution field and enter 360. Now, you know and I know that this goes against every tried-and-true rule of resolution, and breaks the "never-just-type-in-a-higher-number-with-the-Resample-Image-checkbox-turned-on" rule that we all live and die by, but stick with me on this one you've got to try it to believe it. So, type it in, grit your teeth, but don't click OK yet.

Step Four
Back in Photoshop CS, Adobe introduced some new sampling algorithms for resizing images, and according to Vincent's research, the key to this resizing technique is to not use the sampling method Adobe recommends (which is Bicubic Smooth), and instead to choose Bicubic Sharper in the Resample Image pop-up menu, which actually provides better results so much so that Vincent claims that the printed results are not only just as good, but perhaps better than those produced by the expensive, fancy-schmancy upsizing plug-ins.

Step Five
I've tried this technique numerous times, and I have to say the results are pretty stunning. But don't take my word for it click OK, print it out, and see for yourself. Here's the final image resized to 36x24" (you can see the size in the rulers by pressing Command-R [PC: Control-R]).

The words above are from the superb Scott Kelby book. I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who owns Photoshop.
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